Every Night is a Good Night for an ABC Panel Show

Tonight at the Museum is yet another ABC panel show where a host and four guests – is there a contractual reason why these shows always have five people? – sit around trying to be entertaining. The twist? In this one, they succeed! Well, sometimes. Mostly due to the props.

Filmed inside Tasmania’s main museum and art gallery, it is, unsurprisingly, a game show about the kind of things found inside a museum. Which means they’re playing around with a whole lot of exhibits, artworks, items and knowledgeable staff members. Well, not literally – they tend to keep the comedians away from the breakables. But they do constantly bring out things verging on the interesting, which instantly puts this ahead of, say, Gruen.

Unlike the recent (and visually extremely similar) Crime Night!, here the comedians are actively encouraged to make jokes about the subject being discussed. It shouldn’t be surprising that this results in occasional comedy, but this is the ABC we’re talking about.

Sure, the first game (where an object is given two competing descriptions and the panel has to decide which one they believe in) is not exactly new to the world of panel shows. But it’s commonplace because it works, and if you want fresh TV what are you doing watching a panel show?

Other segments involve old stuff, looking for cool old stuff, and answering questions about old stuff. So it does help if you’re a fan of old stuff. Or wildlife, as there’s a bit of that thrown in as well. It’s educational but not in a useful way – this could almost be a kids show, if not for all the clitoris jokes.

The more this degenerates into a bunch of comedians making jokes about weird stuff the better it gets. Fortunately most of the games are pretty loose so pissfarting about is what’s on offer here. It really does stand or fall on the strength of the panel, especially when it starts to verge on Taskmaster territory. As for those panels…

Look, we have a rough scale for whether these shows are any good. A good version is one where it’s worth watching unless there’s comedians on who we actively hate. An average version is one where it’s worth watching if there’s the usual “oh it’s them” line-up. And a shit one is one where we’d only watch it if a legitimate comedy great was on board.

(this never really happens and even then it’s usually a disappointment because they’re not used to this kind of thing, remember when Hannah Gadsby was on the Guy Mont Spelling Bee?)

On this scale, Tonight at the Museum is average verging on good, which is better than we expected. Guess you can’t go wrong with a guest expert on animal vaginas.