Vale the ABC’s Current Wednesday Night Comedy Line-Up

Shaun Micallef’s Eve of Destruction went out the same way it came in: as a relatively engaging, definitely low-stakes talk show that managed to be utterly inessential viewing even by the standards of the genre. It wasn’t bad television, but was it really prime time television? Oh wait, it was on in the Hard Quiz slot. Hang on a second while we dial our expectations all the way down.

There’s nothing intrinsically wrong with watching a couple of people have a decent chat. Especially when one of them’s Shaun Micallef, a man whose interviews skills have come a long way since the heady days of Micallef Tonight – a great tonight show where the interviews were never a strong point.

Now though? He’s keeping things on track but knowing when an aside is worth following up, maintaining a light touch and going for the laughs when they’re there while showing a real interest in the more serious side of things (and drawing a decent tree besides). Australia’s top television interviewer? Well, he’s looking better than most of our “serious” journalists, that’s for sure.

And yet, it’s still just a talk show, and a lightweight one at that. Either Australian television needs two or three of these shows running away quietly in the background as part of a healthy media environment, or ditch them entirely and put what little resources they consume into something with more substance. We’re not holding our breath for either – but we would like to see Micallef back doing something closer to comedy before the Destruction finally gets here.

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Guy Montgomery’s Guy Mont-Spelling Bee is a bit of a tricky one to pass judgment on. And yet here we are: let’s give it a crack. With a risky mix of comedy and what is pretty much the exact opposite of comedy, this seemed like the kind of show that would appeal both to comedy buffs and the boring quiz-obsessed stiffs who seem to compose most of the ABC’s audience these days. And yet!

It was hardly a surprise that the spelling stuff was played for laughs. Didn’t always get them, because spelling is boring. But the show’s commitment to complicated and firmly comedic set-ups for the various challenges really hammered home the idea that no, this was in no way a serious spelling competition. Suck it quiz show fans.

So comedy was the big winner, right? Depends what you mean by comedy. If you mean “a bunch of mates laughing at each others jokes and the general silliness of the show around them”, then yes. Comedy – in the form of the comedians on the show – won big. If you mean the audience at home got some good laughs, bad news.

Look, there were a lot of funny moments across the eight weeks. But way too often, the show felt like the kind of thing that’d be hilarious to watch happen live in front of you but didn’t quite translate that excitement to the folks at home. Comedians cracking up at their own jokes (or the jokes of the person next to them) is nice, but it tends to leave the audience shut out. If these guys are doing all the laughing, what’s left for everyone else?

Which, funnily enough, brings us back to Eve of Destruction. Micallef is pretty much the local master of the silly game show. Nobody’s excited about the idea of Talkin’ ’bout Your Generation coming back without him, even if that final season on Nine didn’t quite work. On that show, and on Eve as well, he’s always fully aware of the audience. When everyone else is getting wrapped up in their own witty japes, he’s the one pulling things back.

Micallef can and does do a lot of funny things on the seemingly endless run of shows with his name in the title, but he’s also always the host. His job is to make sure everyone – audience included – has a good time. If that means standing a little apart from the hilarity, that’s where you’ll find him.

Guy Montgomery’s a very funny guy. So is everyone else on the show: the big selling point was a relentless, freewheeling, anything can happen vibe. How else could you make a spelling bee funny week after week? And it was the contrast between the vibe and the dull-arse subject matter that made it work as well as it did. Not enough vibe? All you have is a spelling bee. If you put that much vibe into a comedy set-up? You get a big old mess – as proven by any number of wacky random lol shows over the history of television.

And yet, once you got past the whole “I can’t believe what I’m watching here” thing, Guy Montgomery’s Guy Mont-Spelling Bee was still a spelling bee. It was an extremely well done, one joke show: “what if a spelling bee was as funny as humanly possible”. And now we know. Thanks.

Mind you, Aaron Chen sure can riff with the best of them.