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.
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". The winner of each episode competes again the following episode and the loser of each episode must wear a dunce cap in the Dunce's Corner.
The show has been renewed for a second season, to air in 2025.
Guy Mont-Spelling Bee is co-produced by Kevin & Co. and ABC Television. This is the second Kevin & Co. production outside New Zealand, having earlier been involved in the production of Taskmaster Australia.
The first series was filmed from 26–29 June 2024 at the ABC Ultimo Centre. The cast includes 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.
Each episode begins with the four contestants being introduced (with the returning champion playing on the rightmost podium) before participating in The Spelling Round and ends with The Buzz Round. In between those rounds, three other rounds and a mini-game are played with Aaron Chen acting as an assistant in these rounds.
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.
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 each episode. The round ends once the voice of the spelling gods utters the words, "Stop spelling!"
At the end of each episode, the player with the highest score is declared the winner and is given a giant novelty ticket to appear in the next episode. In the event of a tie, a sudden-death word is given. Conversely, the guest (and in the event of a tied last place, guests) with the lowest score are gently applauded as they walk to the "Dunce's Corner" to wear a dunce cap.
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.
The studio elements of the second series were recorded at ABC Studio 22 in Sydney from 19 to 26 February 2025, consisting of 10 episodes and one special.
The premiere episode attracted an average overnight audience of 659,000 viewers nationally, winning the daily slot.
David Knox of TV Tonight gave the show three-and-a-half out of five stars. 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".