Guy Montgomery’s Guy Mont Spelling Bee gets bigger and better
Plus: the return of Takeout Kids, a second season of prestige drama Pachinko, and a brand new K-Pop experience.
The show that celebrates spelling is back, and it’s still g-r-e-a-t.
Dai Henwood is standing in front of the nation, his eyes closed. He’s just been asked to spell the word “theft”, and the comedian is lost, adrift, alone in a sea of letters. “Why can I not spell theft?!” he cries in disbelief, as Guy Montgomery, host of Guy Montgomery’s Guy Mont Spelling Bee watches on, a delighted grin on his face. The seconds feel like years. Henwood puts his hands to his head, frantically searching his internal dictionary for answers that refuse to come.
Never before has such a low stakes challenge felt so important. When the answer finally comes to Henwood – “t-h-e-f-t” he spells out triumphantly – he receives a rapturous round of applause. Later, he’ll unleash the phrase “caesarean crumpets” during a powerful acrostic poem, a phrase surely never mentioned on television before, and probably never again. It’s all music to a word nerd’s ears, and a sign that the wonderfully hectic Guy Montgomery’s Guy Mont Spelling Bee is back for a second season.
Spelling Bee is the brainchild of comedian Guy Montgomery, who gathered his comedian friends together over Zoom during the first Covid-19 lockdown and made them spell tricky words. Montgomery then developed the concept into a touring comedy show, before premiering it as a prime time panel series in Aotearoa last year. The show was so successful that an Australian version launched this month, and is already getting rave reviews.
Season one was a joy, and as season two premiered in Aotearoa this week (pairing with a new season of local comedy Double Parked), it’s clear the show has lost none of its hectic charm. In fact, episode one took things up a gear by locking the bad spellers up in jail (the stainless steel toilet was a nice touch). Episode one saw 2023 champion Henwood return to defend his title, alongside comedians Kura Turuwhenua, Tom Sainsbury and Nina Oyama. Sanjay Patel returns as Montgomery’s deadpan assistant, as does the glorious 1970s-style game show set, which gives the whole competition a disarming nostalgic vibe.
Spelling Bee is as sharp and confident as ever, and that’s mostly down to the energetic, quick-witted Montgomery. He’s in full force here, ensuring Spelling Bee is a fast-paced, slick piece of comedy that celebrates not only the weirdness of language, but the collective fallibility of human beings. It doesn’t matter if you can’t spell on Spelling Bee – in fact, there’s little advantage to knowing your “eyes” from your “ayes”.
“This is designed to be irritating,” Montgomery explains during the controversial homonym round, as he continues to take pleasure in making his mates spell weird words without ever having to spell one himself.
Much like Taskmaster, Spelling Bee’s appeal lies in seeing well-known performers pushed out of their comfort zone in a variety of wacky and pointless ways, and it too leans into its own sense of ridiculousness. Sure, some jokes landed better than others (a round that involved a Christmas gift swap went on too long, while a recurring joke about Montgomery sleeping with Nina Oyama’s mother was squeezed for more than it was worth), but the upbeat spirit of Spelling Bee never wavered.
As Henwood proved with that tricky little sucker “theft”, the pressure of spelling a word on television shouldn’t be underestimated, and in a landscape stuffed with international TV formats, Spelling Bee remains a refreshing feat of originality. This is fun, escapist television that champions the talents of our comedians, while also making us think about language in random ways. We still might struggle to spell “milquetoast”, but we’ll always have those caesarean crumpets.
Guy Montgomery’s Guy Mont Spelling Bee screens on Three on Thursdays at 7pm and streams on ThreeNow.
Why you should watch: Takeout Kids
The heartwarming short documentary series Takeout Kids is back with the stories of five tamariki and rangatahi growing up in their parents’ shops. In episode one we meet Priyan, who keeps the counter and stock in check at his family’s superette and bulk food store in Auckland. It’s his first week of school, and in class Priyan gravitates to the toy shopfront not unlike his parents’ own, where he plays the pretend version of the job they do for real. Follow Priyan as he deals with lessons in ABCs, cricket and making friends with the return of Takeout Kids, made with the support of NZ On Air.
Why you should watch: Pachinko (Prime Video)
Critics raved about season one of Pachinko, based on the novel by Min Jin Lee. The Guardian called it “a sumptuous South Korean epic like nothing else on TV“, while others fretted if it was too early in the year to crown the best show of 2022 (it was only March). Offering up a multi-generational narrative, Pachinko explores everything from the immigrant experience to the resilience of women, providing plenty of opportunities to give the old waterworks a whirl. “Awash in big emotions, this is not a series shy about trying to make you cry,” wrote the NBR. Unsurprisingly, season two is already getting five star reviews. / Alex Casey
More pop culture news from The Spinoff:
In one of my favourite My Life in TV’s yet, I chatted to Shortland Street and Virgin River actor Martin Henderson about the television moments that defined his life and career.
Don’t miss Alex Casey’s cracking yarn about the five drama-filled hours she spent on Christchurch’s first murder mystery train ride.
Celebrity Treasure Island Hosts Lance Savali and Bree Tomasel joined us for a special My Life in TV interview to mark the upcoming new season of Celebrity Treasure Island.
Having enjoyed We Were Dangerous at the NZ International Film Festival, I loved this insight into the film in Alex Casey’s interview with the film’s director Josephine Stewart-Te Whiu.
Fur Patrol share their perfectly vibey weekend playlist for dreaming of warmer days in this week’s My Perfect Weekend Playlist.
Plus, we’ve got all the new shows and movies streaming this week, and our favourites from Whānau Marama: New Zealand International Film Festival as it travels the motu
Why you should watch: Made in Korea: The K Pop Experience (TVNZ+)
This new reality series from the BBC takes five English lads with dreams of making it big in music and chucks them into a brutal popstar training course in South Korea. Their band, Dear Alice, has just 100 days to learn from the world’s greatest choreographers, songwriters, and K-pop business experts before they are launched on the global stage. “They will face a schedule of choreography, vocal and performance lessons, life coaching techniques, alongside an immersion into all aspects of Korean life,” the blurb reads. Think Popstars, but much more hectic.
Before we pop off…
Season two of local comedy Double Parked (ThreeNow) launched this week, and this interview (paywalled) with star Antonia Prebble reveals what a labour of love the show was for her. Breaking news: Antonia will also feature in an upcoming My Life in TV profile.
Caroline Shepherd takes one for the team and watches every single Tom Cruise movie ever made. Mission Impossible? You decide.
I missed this when it first came out, but loved this longread about what the race to recap Game of Thrones did to the media and the people working within it. "I had to unpack that a bit and address that and start getting my priorities in order. It was just a TV show." Too real!!!!
Duncan Greive watched British band Ride play at The Powerstation and discovered the strange challenges of nostalgia touring.
“These books are the bane of my existence. The writing is clunky and formulaic. The subjects are bizarre. And although they use a stable of talented illustrators from around the world, the art has an unpleasantly corporate vibe, like you’re reading a progressive workplace’s company-wide brochure on navigating your upcoming redundancy.” I loved Hera Lindsay Bird’s impassioned rant about why the Little People children’s book series has tipped her over the edge.
That’s it for Rec Room for this week. If you liked what you read, why not share Rec Room with your friends and whānau.
