Jack McGee
If it’s ain't broke, don’t fix it. There are 293 episodes of QI. It’d take you six days and nine hours non-stop to watch all of them. That’s a lot of gentle nodding and chuckling to yourself. Don’t Quit Your Day Job elicits all of those same responses, along with a healthy amount of beard scratching. While my inner tall poppy syndrome may find me occasionally wishing the panelists were a little more British (can you tell I wasn’t a 7 Days kid?), I have to give it up for how effectively Day Job nails the panel show format.
Don’t Quit Your Day Job is a panel show with a Sandi-Toksvig-esque central host played by Hoani Hotene. It’s been running since mid-2022, and the show on Friday the 16th of Feb is the first one I’ve seen. In Day Job, two teams of two comedian’s compete to see who “can best hack a job in the real world.” There’s a different profession decided on for each show, and all of the trivia/challenges for the show are themed around it. Ironically, these rarely sound like conventional ‘day jobs’, all being fairly high-concept. On Friday, the theme is veterinarian. This is tame, compared to the following day’s theme of astronaut.
For this show, the two teams consist of Lisa Macleod-Whiting and Keegan Thomas, alongside Jerome Chandrahasen and Leki Lyons. They all slot nicely into a panel show dynamic, and if they weren’t picked deliberately to complement one another, it sure worked out that way.
Macleod-Whiting is a great grounding force for the show. She’s comfortable taking Hotene to task for a confusingly worded question, and often serves as the audience surrogate, saying the answer we’re all thinking. This makes it all the funnier when she comes out of left field with something shocking, or filthy, or disarmingly sincere. There’s some really killer banter between her and Thomas about her first date with her husband, who may or may not have been Linguini, the Ratatouille guy.
Her team partner, Thomas, is endearingly enthusiastic. He frequently barrages into a bit with no way to get out of it, setting himself up for an easy gag at his co-panelists (or his own) expense. Sometimes this approach leads him down dead ends no one can rescue him from but for the most part it works and keeps the energy of the show up. Of course, none of this matters, as when responding to the question “what is a Sarcastic Fringehead?” (it’s a fish by the way, look it up), he says “It’s someone who claims to be a reviewer but just wants to get in for free.” Since Thomas has no respect for critics, I have no respect for him and will drag his name through the mud till the end of time (check out my very positive review of his show Skuxx Deluxe).
Across the table, Chandrahasen is the master of the payoff. Cool and collected, he waits for the pauses in between Thomas’s bluster to interject with a killer one liner. He feels like the dad of the table in the best possible way, and brings a real warmth to the show. His teammate Leki Lyons is the wildcard. Having purportedly prepared material for a show on vegetarian’s instead of veterinarians, he’s definitely the quietest person at the table but when he does pipe up it almost always gets a laugh.
Every now and then, the contestants will be forced to compete in a role-play related challenge, where they’re supported by two improvisers - Megan “Mog” Connolly and Kipling DC. These challenges provide a great change of rhythm from the general banter of the show, but, of course, only works because Connolly and DC are very funny and able to bring the best out of their comedian scene partners. Quick shout out to Lay Over, one of Connolly’s multitude of other Fringe Shows - I saw it closing night and it was sensational. Connolly’s depiction of an overbearing mother to Nina Hogg’s beaten down daughter is one of the funniest things I've seen all year. I also (deservingly) gas up DC in my review for Skuxx Deluxe here.
I’ve talked around him, but the heart and skeleton of the show is its host - Hotene. Hotene is delightfully awkward. He has the perfect amount of slightly nerdy, underplayed enthusiasm to host a show like this. The wording of his questions are often stilted and long winded, setting his panelists up for a great gag as they try and process what he’s getting them to talk about, and most importantly, he seems excited enough by his facts to convince the audience that they are actually interesting. Does he take a bit of time to find his feet at the start? Yeah, sure. But we don’t want him to be a point-and-shoot charisma machine. That’s what the comedians are for, he’s here to facilitate them and he fully succeeds in that.
The production value of the show is high. There’s a slideshow projected throughout with all of the questions and trivia, and each of the slides are beautifully composed. I couldn’t find who the designer was, but I am impressed, to say the least. It lent the whole affair a credibility, giving the show a ‘TVNZ could be in the audience tonight’ kind of feel. I had a great time, the show runs reasonably regularly at the Pow Wow Room and I’d happily go see it again. Check it out!
For this show, the two teams consist of Lisa Macleod-Whiting and Keegan Thomas, alongside Jerome Chandrahasen and Leki Lyons. They all slot nicely into a panel show dynamic, and if they weren’t picked deliberately to complement one another, it sure worked out that way.
Macleod-Whiting is a great grounding force for the show. She’s comfortable taking Hotene to task for a confusingly worded question, and often serves as the audience surrogate, saying the answer we’re all thinking. This makes it all the funnier when she comes out of left field with something shocking, or filthy, or disarmingly sincere. There’s some really killer banter between her and Thomas about her first date with her husband, who may or may not have been Linguini, the Ratatouille guy.
Her team partner, Thomas, is endearingly enthusiastic. He frequently barrages into a bit with no way to get out of it, setting himself up for an easy gag at his co-panelists (or his own) expense. Sometimes this approach leads him down dead ends no one can rescue him from but for the most part it works and keeps the energy of the show up. Of course, none of this matters, as when responding to the question “what is a Sarcastic Fringehead?” (it’s a fish by the way, look it up), he says “It’s someone who claims to be a reviewer but just wants to get in for free.” Since Thomas has no respect for critics, I have no respect for him and will drag his name through the mud till the end of time (check out my very positive review of his show Skuxx Deluxe).
Across the table, Chandrahasen is the master of the payoff. Cool and collected, he waits for the pauses in between Thomas’s bluster to interject with a killer one liner. He feels like the dad of the table in the best possible way, and brings a real warmth to the show. His teammate Leki Lyons is the wildcard. Having purportedly prepared material for a show on vegetarian’s instead of veterinarians, he’s definitely the quietest person at the table but when he does pipe up it almost always gets a laugh.
Every now and then, the contestants will be forced to compete in a role-play related challenge, where they’re supported by two improvisers - Megan “Mog” Connolly and Kipling DC. These challenges provide a great change of rhythm from the general banter of the show, but, of course, only works because Connolly and DC are very funny and able to bring the best out of their comedian scene partners. Quick shout out to Lay Over, one of Connolly’s multitude of other Fringe Shows - I saw it closing night and it was sensational. Connolly’s depiction of an overbearing mother to Nina Hogg’s beaten down daughter is one of the funniest things I've seen all year. I also (deservingly) gas up DC in my review for Skuxx Deluxe here.
I’ve talked around him, but the heart and skeleton of the show is its host - Hotene. Hotene is delightfully awkward. He has the perfect amount of slightly nerdy, underplayed enthusiasm to host a show like this. The wording of his questions are often stilted and long winded, setting his panelists up for a great gag as they try and process what he’s getting them to talk about, and most importantly, he seems excited enough by his facts to convince the audience that they are actually interesting. Does he take a bit of time to find his feet at the start? Yeah, sure. But we don’t want him to be a point-and-shoot charisma machine. That’s what the comedians are for, he’s here to facilitate them and he fully succeeds in that.
The production value of the show is high. There’s a slideshow projected throughout with all of the questions and trivia, and each of the slides are beautifully composed. I couldn’t find who the designer was, but I am impressed, to say the least. It lent the whole affair a credibility, giving the show a ‘TVNZ could be in the audience tonight’ kind of feel. I had a great time, the show runs reasonably regularly at the Pow Wow Room and I’d happily go see it again. Check it out!