{"id":2462986,"date":"2026-06-16T23:19:41","date_gmt":"2026-06-16T23:19:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/?p=2462986"},"modified":"2026-06-16T23:19:41","modified_gmt":"2026-06-16T23:19:41","slug":"review-celebrity-escape-is-a-confusing-puzzle-unto-itself","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/review-celebrity-escape-is-a-confusing-puzzle-unto-itself\/","title":{"rendered":"Review: Celebrity Escape is a confusing puzzle unto itself\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Three\u2019s new escape room gameshow is a sign we may need to cool the jets on both celebrities and puzzles for a while.<\/span><\/p>\n

As someone who will watch celebrities <\/span>do almost anything<\/span><\/a>, it was during Celebrity Escape that I wondered if I had finally reached my limit. The celebrities were attempting to unscramble an ancient Greek cipher to spell a word, and had somehow settled on VATCH, not technically a word. I tried to suppress that same feeling of ballistic rage one experiences while watching a parent slowly log into a smart TV as Josh Thomson, trapped in the escape room with them, summed it up best: \u201cI just wanted to grab it and have a go.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Three\u2019s new gameshow takes seven comedians \u2013 New Zealanders Chris Parker, Abby Howells, Josh Thomson and Hayley Sproull and Australians Luke McGregor, Celia Pacquola and Frank Woodley \u2013 and throws them into a lilac-coloured void leading to six different escape rooms. Under the watch of gamesmaster Rove McManus who, as Howells notes, has disconcertingly not aged a day since Rove Live, they must work together to decipher various clues and puzzles and get out of each locked room before the 45 minute timer runs out.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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The comedian cast do their best within the extremely rigid confines of the show. Parker and Howells in particular serve as excellent narrators who bring their own neuroses to the fore. Howells, who is autistic, worries that \u201cI\u2019ll get out there and I can\u2019t do puzzles and people will be like \u2018what are you good for\u2019,\u201d while Parker constantly has to remind himself not to be an \u201cescape hog\u201d. Pacquola has some excellent one-liners, including \u201cI have a toddler\u2026 getting out of my house is an escape room\u201d and Thomson fills the role of \u2018competitive freak\u2019 with aplomb.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

While there are a few relatable moments of group tension, especially when escape room first-timer Sproull is roundly ignored despite cracking several clues immediately, there\u2019s also a lot of tiresome shots of people\u2019s backs from high-angle Paranormal Activity-style mounted cameras. Despite getting a rundown of each escape room at the beginning of the episode, it\u2019s hard to remember what anyone is supposed to be doing, and even harder to care when the celebrities aren\u2019t even playing for charity, but what appears to be a giant polystyrene key.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"\"\"<\/span><\/span>A familiar sight of people\u2019s backs in Celebrity Escape. Image: Supplied<\/p>\n

Speaking of odd props, in episode one we are faced with a Chekhov\u2019s witch situation after Rove assures us the comedians will be \u201cterrified\u201d and Parker becomes convinced the witch-themed escape room will contain a Spookers-style scare. Alas, when they finally unlock the large closet \u2013 Parker so terrified he can\u2019t look directly at it \u2013 the big reveal is\u2026 a Look Sharp plastic skeleton. With the show <\/span>puzzlingly receiving $422,000 from NZ On Air<\/span><\/a>, I certainly wouldn\u2019t have minded a bit of taxpayer coin going to a wigged drama student instead.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Things get even more bamboozling when it\u2019s revealed that the comedians must eliminate one person from the group after every room. One by one, they secretly select a badge with the comedian\u2019s face on it that they are voting out. Then, one by one again, they pin that badge onto their comedian of choice. With nothing on the line, most decisions are made through random selection, eenie meenie miney mo, or which comedian dared to wear a hat. \u201cTurns out the fedora was one act of pretension too much,\u201d says Woodley, the first to be eliminated.<\/span><\/p>\n

That\u2019s not to say that a game show always needs high stakes to drive the series forward. Comedians compete to win nothing but a terrible golden bust in Taskmaster, but the show knows the real prize is giving them space to figure the tasks out (or not) and letting hilarity and <\/span>threatening raps ensue<\/span><\/a>. Two weeks in, the format of Celebrity Escape doesn\u2019t feel like it has enough room for these memorable moments of weirdness and spontaneity, although perhaps this will come as their number continues to be whittled down.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

And, as much I adore them, it does feel like we might need a break from celeb-centric shows for a while. Say any word enough times it starts to lose all meaning, and there\u2019s no denying that having Celebrity Treasure Island, Celebrity Tipping Point NZ and Celebrity Escape all air in the space of a few weeks is threatening to do just that (although we must shout out workhorse Parker, the only local star to expertly complete the hat trick). In the meantime, let us all continue to run around shrieking \u201cVATCH\u201d and wondering how the heck we get out of here.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Celebrity Escape airs Tuesdays on Three and here on ThreeNow.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n

\u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source thespinoff.co.nz \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Three\u2019s new escape room gameshow is a sign we may need to cool the jets on both celebrities and puzzles for a while. As someone who will watch celebrities do almost anything, it was during Celebrity Escape that I wondered if I had finally reached my limit. The celebrities were attempting to unscramble an ancient […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2462987,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25173],"tags":[484473,484474,484475,22056,484476],"class_list":["post-2462986","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-artists","tag-celebrity-escape","tag-nz-on-air","tag-nz-reality","tag-pop-culture","tag-three"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/Review-Celebrity-Escape-is-a-confusing-puzzle-unto-itself.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2462986","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2462986"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2462986\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2462988,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2462986\/revisions\/2462988"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2462987"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2462986"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2462986"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2462986"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}