Crime Night! good lord it’s real

Press release time!

Crime Night! puts crime under the microscope this November

Hosted by the award-winning Julia Zemiro, ABC’s brand new entertainment show Crime Night! premieres on Wednesday 5 November at 8.30pm on ABC TV and ABC iview.

The six-part series dives beneath the surface of crime to explore the science and psychology behind it all.

Each week Julia is joined by expert criminologists Professor Danielle Reynald and Dr David Bartlett, alongside a rotating panel of Australia’s sharpest comedians to unpack a different area of crime and criminology. Special guests include Celia Pacquola, Mel Buttle, Claire Hooper, Rhys Nicholson, Susie Youssef, Nick Cody, Ryan Shelton, Lizzy Hoo, Alexei Toliopoulos and Steph Tisdell.

Each episode features a unique Experiment of the Week, where panellists or the studio audience become unwitting accomplices in testing long-held assumptions about criminal behaviour. Adding to the mix is comedy sensation, Lou Wall, who delivers their own analysis on a quirky criminal curiosity tied to the week’s theme.

While the criminologists share insightful analysis and the comedians ask the questions we’re all dying to know, Crime Night! blends real-life criminal cases, witty storytelling and entertaining social experiments to expose the frailties, illusions and delusions of our very human obsession with crime.

What does this have to do with comedy? Check out that line-up of guests! Ryan Shelton: there’s a name we haven’t seen in a while.

Also funny: the way this seems to have backed off a little from the original concept, which was

a comedy true-crime panel show where real-life cases are examined through the lens of criminology and comedy.

Sure, if you squint real hard they’re same show… kinda. But you don’t need to be an expert criminologist to realise that letting comedians anywhere near actual true crime cases is a really, really bad idea.

So now they’re just going to be making jokes about “a different area of crime and criminology” instead of specific grim cases of human suffering and loss. Can’t wait to see what “entertaining social experiments” they come up with. Good thing Cluedo is still under copyright.

Oh yeah, there’s a trailer: Guess they won’t be stabbing a random comedian to death each week after all