Other television
Acaster has appeared on a number of gameshows, including Blockbusters (2019) and Pointless (2009–). In 2018, he won Richard Osman's House of Games, wherein four celebrities compete across five episodes. Acaster said Anne Diamond was hostile after he won the first three episodes. After filming, he got drunk, smashed the trophy and gave it to a busker. He discussed his 2019 appearance on The Great British Bake Off in his routine Cold Lasagne Hate Myself 1999, and the mental health issues that he was experiencing at the time. A phrase he used to describe his flapjacks to the judges became a meme: "Started making it / Had a breakdown / Bon appétit." Similarly, fans found his 2022 Celebrity Mastermind performance humorously disastrous. He did not prepare for his specialist subject 'The History of Ice Cream', due to filming commitments, after the programme rejected subjects relating to the comedy of Nish Kumar or Ed Gamble.
The BBC Three series Sounds Random (2016) consisted of 15 short episodes in which Acaster interviews musicians. Using shuffle play on their iPod, the guest describes their relationship to songs. Dances by Acaster and the musician are choreographed to the music. It followed a similar show that Acaster hosted on FUBAR Radio, an internet radio station with a focus on comedy; an executive producer compared it to the radio programme Desert Island Discs (1942–).
In 2016, Acaster wrote a sitcom pilot for BBC Two called We The Jury, about a man who is called to jury duty for a murder trial after dreaming of serving as a juror. The Guardian's Brian Logan said that the writing and "heightened reality" reflected Acaster's comedic style, but was less successful in the medium, while Mark Gibbings-Jones called it "delightfully off-kilter". The Observer's Euan Ferguson panned its "cliched characters and surreal madness". The American channel CBS picked up the idea for a pilot, as Jury Duty, in 2018 and 2020, with Acaster as executive producer. The project has not come to fruition. Also in 2016, Acaster wrote for and narrated a Comedy Central pilot called Funny, Furry and Famous. The programme was a clip show with comedians reacting to viral videos of animals.
For Christmas 2017, Acaster starred in a mockumentary short for Sky Arts about turning on the Christmas lights in Kettering, James Acaster's Xmas.
Alongside Ed Gamble, Lloyd Langford and John Robins, Acaster created The Island (2022), while stuck in New York City due to a snowstorm. The panel show was hosted by Tom Allen and saw four comedians competing to create the best desert island. It was cancelled after one series on Dave, with critics panning the concept.
The documentary The Unofficial Science of Home Alone (2022) saw Acaster, along with the comedian Guz Khan, recreate stunts from the movies Home Alone (1990) and Home Alone 2: Lost in New York (1992). Alex Brooker interviews actors and crew from the original films. Production was initially scheduled for 2021, but the show premiered around Christmas 2022. Acaster described being very nervous during the stunts. Khan and Acaster had both referenced Home Alone in recent panel show appearances. In a three-star review for The Guardian, Stuart Heritage critiqued that the hosts should have been more active participants than "wisecracking observers" led by the engineer Zoe Laughlin. Heritage criticised it as inferior to the experimental science programme MythBusters (2003–2018).
Acaster appeared with Gamble on the fifth series of Celebrity Hunted (2023), which tasked participants with evading "Hunters" around the UK for a fortnight. During their appearance they ate in a Michelin starred restaurant, called into Gamble's Radio X programme, and released a video mocking the Hunters. Acaster also gave Gamble a tattoo. Acaster was caught after goading the Hunters to the Taskmaster house and squirting them with a water gun that he joked contained "piss"; Gamble escaped but was caught soon after. In a two-star review, i's Emily Baker criticised that the pair and the Hunters all put "very little" effort into the game.
Acaster is the voice of Armadillo in the English dub of the Italian animated series This World Can't Tear Me Down (2023).
Acaster is set to appear on the second series of The Celebrity Traitors in autumn 2026.
As a recurring joke, Acaster announces that it is his birthday every time he appears on the talk show Sunday Brunch.
