October 29, 2026 — 5:30am

Celebrity Escape ★★

Some things are more fun to do than watch, and yet still make passable television. Just think of all the programs about fishing, cooking and renovating. There’s even a reality show involving knitting. But Australian-New Zealand collaboration Celebrity Escape, which puts seven comedians into escape rooms to solve puzzles and unlock doors, manages to make this popular activity awkward and boring, and even more awkward and boring to watch.

The cast of Celebrity Escape  (from left) Frank Woodley, Abby Howells, Hayley Sproull, host Rove McManus, Josh Thomson, Chris Parker, Celia Pacquola and Luke McGregor.

Originally launched in New Zealand to mixed reviews in June, Celebrity Escape is the latest in a wearingly long line of comedian-stacked game and panel shows. Hosted by Rove McManus in the role of games master, it purports to be a new concept, but it is really just another tired idea relying on a props department for visual gags, and comedians for improvised slapstick and wordplay.

McManus is jestingly sadistic, chortling from a surveillance chamber at the players’ ineptitude, while explaining the rules and pointing out the clues. However, the villainous power afforded his position doesn’t sit as comfortably on this perennial nice guy as it does on Taskmaster Australia overlord Tom Gleeson.

Assembling in “the void”, a corridor lined with doors leading to themed chambers, four New Zealanders (Josh Thomson, Hayley Sproull, Abby Howells and Chris Parker) and three Australians (Luke McGregor, Celia Pacquola and Frank Woodley) resort to cartwheeling when the banter runs dry.

Once inside the first room, a “witch’s cabin” named after a real woman hilariously executed during the Salem witch trials, the comedians descend into dithering confusion. This task requires analytical thinking, not so much a quick wit, and rather than this resulting in the uproarious spectacle of celebrities out of their comfort zones – like we need any more of that – it feels pointless.

It’s not as if they don’t try, but unfortunately the group dynamics yield neither humour nor drama. McGregor and Pacquola are the nice besties from Rosehaven, while whimsical fool Woodley becomes uncharacteristically serious. The Kiwis work their self-deprecating shticks, except for Wellington Paranormal’s Josh Thomson, who makes a valiant effort to stoke competition with deadpan trash talk.

At least Taskmaster, on which many of these performers have appeared, has scope for physical silliness. There, the comedians largely work alone, bouncing off a skilled fall-guy (Tom Cashman is superb in the local version).

The comedians, including Luke McGregor and Celia Pacquola (left), find keys in the Mechanics Workshop in episode two of Celebrity Escape.  

Even more worryingly, Celebrity Escape is just another in a seemingly endless line of comedian-stacked panel and game shows. Julia Morris’ Class Clowns is currently testing our patience for this kind of low-budget comedy, but at least that format is open-ended enough to give its players room to move. While Julia Zemiro’s Crime Night! doesn’t need to try quite as hard, but it’s also guilty of shoving comedians from an ever-shrinking casting pool into a themed setting and expecting them to find the funny – in that case, in the grisly details of true crimes.

Please, for the love of Thank God You’re Here, can we return to the ingenious simplicity of theatresports? And properly invest in our funny folk, so that more sitcoms such as Kath & Kim and Fisk, and sketch shows such Full Frontal and Aunty Donna’s Big Ol’ House of Fun and Black Comedy might be developed. We have too proud a history of homegrown comedy, and way too much talent that is needed now, more than ever, to make sense and light of a darkening world, to waste our finest comedians on cookie-cutter entertainment.

Celebrity Escape premieres at 9pm on Thursday, November 5, on ABC Entertains and ABC iview.

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Source: The Sydney Morning Herald · Bridget McManus

At a glance

Topic
World
Country
🇦🇺 AU
Publisher language
EN
Added to Allnira