Vale Guy Montgomery’s Guy-Mont Spelling Bee 2026

Over the years, we’ve not exactly expressed huge enthusiasm for Guy Montgomery’s Guy-Mont Spelling Bee. Its fundamental flaw, we’ve repeatedly argued, is that it’ll never be as funny as you’d like a show like that to be, because the main point of the show – spelling words – cannot be made funny. Yet, somehow, in this third series (of the Australian version) of Guy Montgomery’s Guy-Mont Spelling Bee, the show has become pretty funny.

One reason for its success is that the show was shot over three days during the Melbourne International Comedy Festival. This was a smart move, as it maximised the possibility that lots of really funny people could appear on it. The contestants included international acts like Phil Wang, Rose Matafeo, David O’Doherty and Demi Adejuyigbe, as well as a host of local favourites from across the generations: Andrew Denton, John Safran, Michelle Brasier, Scout Boxall, Brett Blake, and Anisa Nandaula, amongst others.

This wide range of funny people added a lot to the show, with older male comedians like Denton, Colin Lane and Akmal repeatedly causing chaos and confusion, and sometimes giving off mad old man vibes, to the bemusement of some of the younger contestants.

Another great addition to the show was Sam Campbell (Make That Movie), who took over from Aaron Chen as Montgomery’s oddball assistant and truly made the role his own. And while there’s no getting away from the fact that each round will inevitably involve the contestants trying to correctly spell a word, Campbell made sure the road to that spelling challenge was paved with comedy gold.

Many of the Campbell-run rounds used the opportunity to do something between sketch comedy and a twisted take on The Price Is Right, with Campbell dressing up as various characters across the series, including, memorably, a clumsy mixologist, a sleazy talent show host and a sexist robot.

More creative twists on the format introduced this year were penalties for doing too well, with three-time episode winner Demi Adejuyigbe finally losing his fourth episode because he’d been made to spell impossible words from the “Flagon of Futility” or run all over the studio to access buzzers during The Buzz Round.

What we liked about this was how it both played into and against the way game show audiences are invited to become emotionally invested in whether a long-time champion wins the series or the jackpot. Not only did we find ourselves caring whether Adejuyigbe won another show, we wondered what lengths the show would go to to get rid of him.

When you compare this to the comparatively straighter approaches to the show in previous series, it’s obvious which is funnier. Full credit to the show’s writers Guy Montgomery, Abby Howells and Emma Holland, and contributing writers Sam Campbell and Ray O’Leary, for making this the funniest – and weirdest – quiz show on television.

Had you asked us whether we’d like to see more of Guy Montgomery’s Guy-Mont Spelling Bee this time last year, we’d definitely have said no. But having seen the transformed third series, we say bring on series four. The show will never get away from the fact that spelling words isn’t funny, but if everything around it is as funny as it can possibly be, that’s good enough.