Crime Night! review: the real crime is the tired panel show format

When Crime Night! was first announced by the ABC, it’s safe to say the immediate reaction was, well, not overwhelmingly positive.

Described in the media release as ‘a comedy true-crime panel show where real-life cases are examined through the lens of criminology and comedy’ – yes, they said comedy twice – the idea of getting a panel of comedians into the studio to laugh at real-life murders seemed possibly in bad taste, no matter how well all the ABC’s coverage of the mushroom killer had done in the ratings.

It’s a relief to report that Crime Night! is not, in fact, a bunch of gagsters dropping one-liners while standing around a fresh grave. Each episode delivers a carefully balanced panel, with two crime experts and two of Australia’s more reliable comedians – no loose cannons here. With host Julia Zemiro exuding an aura of sombre restraint, there is very little chance that anything you see here will result in tearful headlines in a News Corp publication.

Which is a bit of a shame because this is basically just another example of the ABC’s endless line-up of fairly forgettable panel programs, and the occasional bad taste quip would go a long way towards injecting a bit of life (as it were) into proceedings.

Do comedy and crime even go together?

To avoid the obvious deathtrap of having the panel wisecrack about actual cases, Crime Night! focuses on the elements of true crime, or as it used to be known, crime. Episode one is about eyewitness testimony. Bad news everyone, it’s not as reliable as you think.

Across the half hour, the experts Danielle Reynald and David Bartlett fire off facts about how dodgy and easily misled our memories are. Comedians Celia Pacquola and Mel Buttle ask the, well, not tough questions, but play the role of audience-surrogate while getting in a few decent lines along the way.

Real-life cases are cited as examples, including the JFK assassination and the conviction of Ivan Milat. Not-so-real cases also get a look in, notably a clip from the 90s TV version of Cluedo.

There’s also an experiment that was performed on the unwitting comedians as they came into the ABC studio. How accurately will they remember what they saw going on in the lobby?

What’s being talked about is interesting just on its own. It seems that memories fade quickly, repeating the story of what happened cements those events in your memory, people aren’t great at identifying people of races different from their own, leading questions can shape your memory, if there’s a weapon involved witnesses will focus on it over faces, and so on.

There are some attempts to make this more than just a string of fascinating facts. The aforementioned experiment has Buttle and Pacquola trying to put together identikit images of who they saw, which gets a few laughs. There’s also a short skit pointing out that having a home device like Alexa or Siri might not be a great idea if you’re planning a crime, which helps break things up a little.

Crime Night! format borrows from tired ABC favourites

If you’re thinking all this sounds a little like Gruen Crime, well done, you should be out there solving crimes.

The ABC’s original media release for Crime Night! made it sound a little like a free-for-all panel show. Imagine a version of The Cheap Seats, except they were making jokes about actual murders and the show only ran seven minutes after the lawyers got to it. What we’ve got instead is the ABC seeing the ratings for true crime stories and pulling the Gruen template off the shelf.

Read: The Cheap Seats review: Australia’s consistently funniest TV show

The problem is that, unlike advertising, you can’t really have a lot of different views around crime. (Well, you can, but the ABC rarely allows pro-killing advocates to air their views on lightweight panel shows.) The kind of banter and one-upmanship that gives similar shows their energy isn’t really a thing here – it’s just two experts providing a lot of interesting information while everyone else listens intently.

Crime Night! is about an endlessly fascinating subject and it features knowledgeable experts and interesting examples. With future episodes covering topics such as scams, forensic science and convincing alibis, it has all the ingredients for a highly entertaining series. It’s just that a panel show isn’t the best recipe to make those ingredients into quality television.

So why does the ABC keep trying to turn everything into a panel show? That’s a mystery this team should look into.

Crime Night! airs Wednesdays on the ABC from 5 November, with all episodes available to stream on ABC iView.

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