Why Shaun Micallef hasn’t quite destroyed the chat show

Shaun Micallef’s Eve of Destruction may not be a game-changing chat show, but it’s different enough to be interesting. Many chat shows try to get guests to make startling confessions or to cry over dead relatives, and there’s a bit of that here, but the bigger focus is on relatable, interesting stories. So far, so conventional.

But Eve of Destruction is also what happens when you get a renowned sketch comedian and his writers to make a chat show. Sure, there’s a lot of chat, but there’s also more sketch-style comedy than you might expect. An innovation in this series is that Micallef opens the show pretending to play a tiny keyboard on a concertina stand that keeps collapsing. Hilarity ensues. There are also weird, funny cutaways to single gags, and some amusingly violent ways to undertake the “destruction” part of the show. Andrew Denton never did that.

The point of Eve of Destruction, lest we forget, is that each guest brings on two items they’d save as their home is destroyed (by a war, say, or an act of God), with the potential to sacrifice one of the two things should things get really bad in that whole disaster scenario. This high-concept framing device opens up the personal stories from the guests, but also tells us a bit about who they are deep down in a novel way.

So, if you’re tuning into Shaun Micallef’s Eve of Destruction expecting a conventional chat show, you might be disappointed, but if you’re tuning in expecting a lot of Shaun Micallef comedy, then there’s less than you might be hoping for. Everyone loses!

But that’s how it goes with Micallef these days; his appearances on Dancing with the Stars were a mix of the ‘Shaun Micallef comedy persona’ dancing and, “Hey, he’s actually quite good!” And, also, no one makes either proper chat shows or sketch comedy anymore. Better get down to the Salvos and hope they’ve got some Micallef P(r)ogram(me) or Parkinson DVDs on the shelf if you’re after those kinds of things.

Having said that, someone down at Eve of Destruction clearly thought it would be a better show if more of the guests were comedians. So in news, you, the reader of this blog about comedy, may appreciate, we see Frank Woodley, John Safran, Celeste Barber, Tony Martin and Rhys Nicholson across this series (plus a surprise appearance from a much-loved comic in the first episode) alongside more traditional guests from the worlds of entertainment, the arts, sport and the media. Micallef also tries to get laughs out of the non-comedian guests, such as the fun competition in episode two, where Micallef and Lisa McCune showcase their Shakespearean death scene skills.

And while this isn’t necessarily the Micallef comedy fans want, it’s the best Micallef we’re going to get in 2025 that doesn’t involve him waltzing. Which is a good thing?