The New Zealand comedy show that celebrates spelling is back, and it’s still g-r-e-a-t.

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Dai Henwood is standing in front of the nation, his eyes closed. He’s just been asked to spell the word “theft”, and the comedian is lost, adrift, alone in a sea of letters. “Why can I not spell theft?!” he cries in disbelief, as Guy Montgomery, host of Guy Montgomery’s Guy Mont Spelling Bee watches on, a delighted grin on his face. The seconds feel like years. Henwood puts his hands to his head, frantically searching his internal dictionary for answers that refuse to come.

Never before has such a low stakes challenge felt so important. When the answer finally comes to Henwood – “t-h-e-f-t” he spells out triumphantly – he receives a rapturous round of applause. Later, he’ll unleash the phrase “caesarean crumpets” during a powerful acrostic poem, a phrase surely never mentioned on television before, and probably never again. It’s all music to a word nerd’s ears, and a sign that the wonderfully hectic Guy Montgomery’s Guy Mont Spelling Bee is back for a second season.

Spelling Bee is the brainchild of comedian Guy Montgomery, who gathered his comedian friends together over Zoom during the first Covid-19 lockdown and made them spell tricky words. Montgomery then developed the concept into a touring comedy show, before premiering it as a prime time panel series in Aotearoa last year. The show was so successful that an Australian version launched this month, and is already getting rave reviews.

Season one was a joy, and as season two premiered in Aotearoa this week (pairing with a new season of local comedy Double Parked), it’s clear the show has lost none of its hectic charm. In fact, episode one took things up a gear by locking the bad spellers up in jail (the stainless steel toilet was a nice touch). Episode one saw 2023 champion Henwood return to defend his title, alongside comedians Kura Turuwhenua, Tom Sainsbury and Nina Oyama. Sanjay Patel returns as Montgomery’s deadpan assistant, as does the glorious 1970s-style game show set, which gives the whole competition a disarming nostalgic vibe.

Spelling Bee is as sharp and confident as ever, and that’s mostly down to the energetic, quick-witted Montgomery. He’s in full force here, ensuring Spelling Bee is a fast-paced, slick piece of comedy that celebrates not only the weirdness of language, but the collective fallibility of human beings. It doesn’t matter if you can’t spell on Spelling Bee – in fact, there’s little advantage to knowing your “eyes” from your “ayes”.

“This is designed to be irritating,” Montgomery explains during the controversial homonym round, as he continues to take pleasure in making his mates spell weird words without ever having to spell one himself.

Much like Taskmaster, Spelling Bee’s appeal lies in seeing well-known performers pushed out of their comfort zone in a variety of wacky and pointless ways, and it too leans into its own sense of ridiculousness. Sure, some jokes landed better than others (a round that involved a Christmas gift swap went on too long, while a recurring joke about Montgomery sleeping with Nina Oyama’s mother was squeezed for more than it was worth), but the upbeat spirit of Spelling Bee never wavered.

As Henwood proved with that tricky little sucker “theft”, the pressure of spelling a word on television shouldn’t be underestimated, and in a landscape stuffed with international TV formats, Spelling Bee remains a refreshing feat of originality. This is fun, escapist television that champions the talents of our comedians, while also making us think about language in random ways. We still might struggle to spell “milquetoast”, but we’ll always have those caesarean crumpets.

Guy Montgomery’s Guy Mont Spelling Bee screens on Thursdays at 7pm on Three and streams on ThreeNow.