Guy Montgomery's Guy Mont-Spelling Bee (Australian TV series)

Guy Montgomery's Guy Mont-Spelling Bee is an Australian television comedy panel show on the ABC, created and presented by Guy Montgomery and co-hosted by Aaron Chen, based on the New Zealand TV show of the same name. The eight-episode first series premiered on 14 August 2024; every episode was made available on ABC iview that day.^[1]

Guy Mont Spelling Bee is loosely based on a spelling bee: each episode, four comedians participate in a series of rounds, where the goal is almost always to spell words or names in rounds that are "designed to befuddle, bamboozle, and bedazzle".^[1] The winner of each episode competes again the following week and the loser of each episode (the one who got last place) must wear a dunce cap in the Dunce's Corner.^[1][2]

The cast is set to include Wil Anderson, Tony Armstrong, Concetta Caristo, Urzila Carlson (who also appeared in the original New Zealand version), Tom Gleeson, Peter Helliar, Geraldine Hickey, Nazeem Hussain, Demi Lardner, Zoë Coombs Marr, Luke McGregor, Tim Minchin, Rhys Nicholson and Steph Tisdell.^[1][3]

The show is co-produced by Kevin & Co. and ABC Television.^[1][4] This is the second Kevin & Co. production outside New Zealand, having earlier been involved in the production of Taskmaster Australia.

Each episode begins with The Spelling Round and ends with The Buzz Round. In between those rounds, there are other rounds which vary with each episode.

Guests pick a word from the Coward's Cup (easy to spell words worth one point), the Person's Purse (worth two points), or the Bucket of Bravery (words deemed challenging to spell and worth three points). The guest receives the points if their spelling is correct.

• Hometown Hero: Guests spell a word that relates to the area they came from.
  • In episode 1, since Carlson was born in South Africa, a map of that country was also depicted in addition to the map of Australia.
• Money: Guests pick a denomination of Australian currency, which includes currently circulating coins and banknotes, to spell a word related to their chosen denomination.

• Spell it Better: Guests invent a new and improved spelling for an existing word chosen by Montgomery.
• Spell the Audience Name: Guests choose a member of the audience to spell their full (legal) name.

The Buzz Round refers to the fast-paced round where words based on the chosen theme are spelled in a rapid-fire manner. The guest that is in last place, or chosen by Montgomery among those tied in last place, chooses one of four categories provided by Montgomery to start the round. Once the round starts, the guest who hits the buzzer first is given an opportunity to spell the word. Each word is worth one point, but the guest is docked one point if their spelling is incorrect.

The amount of time given in this round varies with episode. The round ends once the voice of the spelling gods utters the words, "Stop spelling!"

At the end of each episode, the guest with the highest score is declared the winner and returns in the next episode. Conversely, the guest with the lowest score walks to the "Dunce's Corner" to wear a dunce cap there.

The first season premiered on 14 August 2024, with new episodes airing each Wednesday night. All eight episodes were released at once on ABC iview. The air dates shown in the table below are for ABC TV.

Final scores in parentheses after the name; winner in bold text

The premiere episode attracted an average overnight audience of 659,000 viewers nationally, winning the daily slot.^[7][6]

David Knox of TV Tonight gave the show three-and-a-half out of five stars.^[8] Critic Giselle Au-Nhien Nguyen of The Guardian gave it a positive review (five out of five stars), describing the show as "an absolute d-e-l-i-g-h-t".^[9]

• Official website