True crime and comedy? Julia Zemiro awaits verdict on new ABC show

Julia Zemiro wants to set the record straight. Her coming ABC series, Crime Night!, which was emphatically pitched as a “comedy true-crime panel show”, is not about true crime. Or, at least not how she understands it.

“True crime, to me, is a genre where people make podcasts around particular cases … often creating content for content’s sake,” she says. “It can become a little ghoulish because you’re talking about victims and their lives. That’s not what we’re doing at all.

“I was a bit disappointed that that’s how the show was set up [in the initial press release] because it’s not that … I think sometimes true-crime shows can slightly glamorise what’s going on, and there’s no glamour in what we’re doing at all.”

It’s a rebuttal that will give solace to many members of the public who expressed their discomfort after the show’s announcement on the ABC’s social media platforms earlier this year. “True-crime comedy? Not sure about how hilarious that might be for the survivors,” wrote one commenter. “Laughing about the worst moments of people’s life? I’ll pass thanks,” said another.

But it might equally disappoint prospective viewers who were excited to have Zemiro as their guide to the latest gruesome cases ripped from the headlines. With the show’s announcement coming at the height of mushroom murder trial mania, two days after the sentencing of Erin Patterson, those same comments sections were also full of praise and jokes about beef Wellington.

Zemiro might bristle at ABC head of entertainment Rachel Millar describing Crime Night! as being “for anyone who loves bingeing the latest true-crime podcast, or playing detective in the group chat” (a quote from that first press release), but Millar is undeniably right about one thing: “Australians can’t get enough of true crime.” And, for better or worse, that makes Crime Night! a show for and of this moment.

So … what exactly is Crime Night?

This six-part series unites two renowned criminologists, Professor Danielle Reynald and Dr David Bartlett, with popular comedians to “dive beneath the surface of crime” and “discover the science and psychology behind it all”.

Though it does discuss real incidents, most often historic cases such as Ivan Milat and Lindy Chamberlain, each episode is instead focused on a broad theme. The cases discussed serve as evidence of a particular issue in the justice system – from the fallibility of eyewitness testimony to the limitations of forensic science. And the comedians (including a standalone segment with newcomer Lou Wall doing their best film noir cosplay) then riff on the subject and take part in an “experiment of the week”.

The whole thing takes place in a dimly lit set, all corkboards and red string, that looks like it’s come straight from Only Murders in the Building – itself a comedy satire of our true-crime obsession.

“My fear was, how do you do crime and comedy?” says Zemiro, who is an executive producer as well as the host. “But once we looked at it, it wasn’t so much that it was about comedy ... it’s more about a conversation around criminology.”

In fact, the show was conceived by co-executive producer Frank Bruzzese (The Weekly with Charlie Pickering) when he started studying criminology during lockdown. And the two criminologists featured were his lecturers.

“Frank pitched the concept and was like, ‘If you think this is a terrible idea, just tell me’,” says Reynald. “But we thought it was brilliant! This is exactly what we try to do as lecturers … we want to make it interesting and fun and engaging so that students remember stuff and get as much from it as possible.”

The class Bruzzese was enrolled in was called Homicide, says Reynald, which she designed based on the structure of an episode of Law and Order. Though she’s not that into true crime (“it’s too close to work”), Reynald says “our pop culture obsession with crime is completely natural” – whether it’s the latest serial killer drama or documentary on Netflix, or one of the many true-crime podcasts rocketing up the charts.

“It’s a good thing that we’re more exposed [to this kind of content], that we know more,” says Reynald about the post-Serial podcast boom in particular. “But it can be a problem when people think that they are more knowledgeable than they are … and get more involved than they should, given the limited information that they have.”

So, does a show such as Crime Night! simply give true-crime lovers (well-fed by commercial TV) more ammunition to take to the Reddit threads? Or is it an expert-led solution to the misinformation already in circulation? The jury is out.

‘You don’t know what the audience will make of it’

Discussions of horrific cases, such as the Ivan Milat murders, are a significant tonal challenge for the show, but the vast majority of Crime Night! is centred on non-violent crime. There’s an episode about surveillance, which educates people about the panopticon, which exploits our fear of being watched, and how that applies to cameras on our self-serve checkouts. Another episode looks at scams, detailing recent incidents such as the “hi mum” and “AusPost” texts.

The show is designed, Reynald says, to “help people be less scared of crime ... and empower them to protect themselves”. That might sound a bit like the mantra of hit true-crime podcast My Favourite Murder – “stay sexy and don’t get murdered” – but the show leans closer to the classic infotainment style of Gruen.

“At the end of the day, you don’t know what the audience will make of it,” Zemiro says. “But it’s good that the ABC is trying something a bit different.”

Is this Logie award-winner nervous about how this, her first panel show after 20 years on our screens, will be received?

“Trust me, I’ve been nervous before. I felt nervous about RockWiz: we literally had $200 for wardrobe, and I’d never done TV by myself before as a host. I was really nervous about the first episode of Home Delivery … I was nervous about Great Australian Walks! Sometimes it’s good to do things a bit out of your comfort zone.”

Crime Night! premieres at 8.30pm on Wednesday, November 5 on the ABC and ABC iview.

Find out the next TV, streaming series and movies to add to your must-sees. Get The Watchlist delivered every Thursday.