Can Guy Montgomery’s Guy Mont-Spelling Bee Funny?

Guy Montgomery’s Guy Mont-Spelling Bee is back, with more comedians spelling words across ten 45-minute-long episodes. And give or take a few rounds where there’s an added element, like hanging out miniature laundry or a “Spot the difference” contest, that is pretty much it. It’s round after round of comedians spelling words and sometimes being funny.

Is this better than round after round of comedians doing stupid tasks and sometimes being funny? Or some advertising executives talking about advertising in an occasionally funny way? Yes. And also, no. Because despite having comedian contestants and funny-sounding rounds, you don’t get points for being funny on Guy Montgomery’s Guy Mont-Spelling Bee. You get points for spelling words correctly. And that feels like a show which is wasting its participants’ talents.

Hannah Gadsby was a surprising guest to appear in two episodes of this show. They’re world famous, they’ve had multiple successful Netflix specials… what were they doing here? Gadsby presumably started to wonder that themself after winning the first episode due to a stunning performance in the final, fast-pacedround. And they looked set to do it all again in episode two. So, facing a choice of going home or coming back for more, Gadsby let Julia Zemiro win. We have no idea whether Gadsby opted out because they saw how limiting the show is, in terms of being a vehicle to be truly funny. But we wouldn’t blame them if they did.

Because in Guy Montgomery’s Guy Mont-Spelling Bee, unless you totally suck at spelling the words you have to spell, or you can improvise a funny quip to lob at Montgomery or his sidekick Aaron Chen, there’s not a lot of scope to get laughs. And yes, the show uses every trick in the book to make things funny, but you need something else going on to sustain a 45-minute-long show.

Aaron Chen’s surreal pissfarting around is fun, but wouldn’t it be better in a show which was a proper vehicle for that kind of thing? Yeah, yeah, we know the ABC has no money and is forced to fill up airtime with cheap shows like this, but we still get to dream about a world where anyone good in Australian comedy gets a chance to make their own sitcom, or sketch show, or something else entirely.

And so, even though Guy Montgomery’s Guy Mont-Spelling Bee is clearly one of the better shows of this type, we ultimately find it a disappointment. Because every other comedy show on TV right now is a show of this type. And every comedian, finding it’s not possible to make real comedy anymore, ends up on them.