Crime Night! Let’s Make This Short

We all remember the giddy joy we felt when we first heard about Crime Night! An ABC series where comedians made jokes about true crime cases? What the fuck? There was absolutely no way this was not going to be a massive car crash, and we were 100% there for it. Comedy is back, baby!

And then the actual show went to air and it was boring as shit.

Look, even we knew the ABC wasn’t deranged enough to put to air a show where comedians made jokes about the victims of crime. But Crime Night! is basically “what if we got the Gruen team to make crime boring?” How is it even possible to make crime boring? Glad you asked.

While Crime Night! features five panelists, it only needs two. That’d be the two experts, who provide all the information that is the only thing this show has to offer. Not interesting information like you get in true crime podcasts; boring information like you get in criminology textbooks.

Okay, that’s maybe a bit harsh. But think about it: what’s the thing that makes true crime so interesting? Is it the human element, the way people turn to crime when they’re greedy, or desperate, or pushed too far? Or is it a ten minute discussion on the scientific fact that people’s memories are basically dogshit and eyewitness accounts are trash?

Crime Night! is a panel show designed to provide information about how people examine and investigate crimes. Not information about actual crimes, though they do bring them up every now and again. Only really old ones though, back in your box lawyers.

Dry, fact-based, only one short clip from classic 90s game show Cluedo – there’s even actual experiments. It’s a wonder they didn’t get Doctor Karl on board. This is basically the kind of thing he blathers on about, only here the experts seem to know what they’re talking about. Finally, a murder-based version of The Curiosity Show. Only not as interesting as that.

And as for comedy? Forget it. Even by ABC panel show standards this is a stiff. Not that the comedians behind the desk get much to work with in the first place. They’re just there because in the ABC scheme of things comedians are one step above regular people, and this needs regular people to be impressed by the experts.

Future panelists include Claire Hooper, Rhys Nicholson, and Ryan Shelton, who must have a new agent as he’s turning up all over the place. Maybe they can find some laughs in this parade of horrors, who knows? We don’t, we struggled to make it through the first episode.

Even then, we spent much of the time asking ourselves “what are the chances this was called Crime Night! – and not the much more natural Crime Time! – because Crime Time! is already a semi-regular segment on The Cheap Seats?”

Eh, who cares. Case closed.