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Glenn & Mick’s Celebrity Intervention ★★★★
Since it was announced last year, details of this new show spearheaded by multi-hatted comedians, actors and radio presenters Mick Molloy and Glenn Robbins, have been scant. In a jokey teaser, that didn’t announce either a title or a concept, Molloy promised a show that would “capture the imagination of a generation”. I don’t know if the resulting series quite reaches those heights, but Glenn & Mick’s Celebrity Intervention may well turn out to be just the intervention free-to-air TV needs.
This new series is a celebrity “roast” with a bit of This Is Your Life on the side. It’s a fast-and-loose studio couch show in which smart-aleck comedians pile on snarky one-liners featuring cameos by colleagues, friends and family members who, if you can believe it, just happen to be among the studio audience or passing by the greenroom. Add a few stunts, digressions and unexpected diversions, and voila, we have a somewhat mad, hard-to-categorise, eight-part comedy series that’s actually very funny.
The set-up is that Mick Molloy and Glenn Robbins have identified a handful of celebrity pals who, for the sake of their flat-lining careers and questionable personalities, need reputational rehab. Robbins sets off to bag that week’s sucker and bring them back to the studio, where Molloy and a colleague who knows the subject well are waiting on the couch to deliver the tough-love intervention.
As for the grill itself, think geeky photos from high school, audition reels for shows that have been scrubbed from resumes and social media posts that have come back to haunt. There’s no teary reminiscences, reunions, ghosts of the past or discoveries of unknown children (though that gag does get a workout in one of the episodes). The entire show walks a fine line between embarrassment and uncovering a career-ending gaffe, but consistently ensures no one is hung out to dry.
It’s not just the guests who are in the firing line. Most succeed at turning the tables on the presenters, who are prepared to get as much as they give having submitted their own outtakes and cringy photos to the cause. That’s certainly one of the show’s secret herbs and spices. The other – which the opening episode with a feisty Carrie Bickmore makes clear – is the willingness of the subject to play along, to embark on a performance on their own terms. This is an equal-opportunity roast in which everyone shares the mirth.
The show is very much on brand for Molloy’s self-deprecating, blokey but genial comedy which he has finessed over the years on The Front Bar and Have You Been Paying Attention? And like those shows, this makes a virtue of a “cheap and cheerful” aesthetic and budget.
