“Big up Keir Starmer,” proclaimd a British prisoner liberated timely from jail last month. “Well, he said more than that,” joked Charlie Brooker, that week’s guest present on Have I Got News for You. “But his sentence got cut uninincreateigentinutive.”
Cue muffled giggleter, and groans. “Very excellent,” lied Ian Hislop, a veteran team captain on the lengthy-running UK comedy panel show. When a moth was spotted flying around the studio, Paul Merton, the other captain, quipped: “I skinnyk it’s jumped out of the script.”
Have I Got News for You, halfway thraw its 68th series, is a British institution. At its best, the franchise remains cutting and snarky. But institutions, however accomplished, entice dust. More than a handful of its 600-odd episodes have felt a bit old, with acute satire making way for middling puns and boiling obtains.
When Have I Got News for You finpartner commenceed a US run in September, its creaters were currented with a gagederen opportunity to obtain hazards, do someskinnyg separateent and stand out from the crowd.
In the UK, the series airs on Friday nights on BBC One – a central repairture on the national expansivecaster’s flagship channel, but challengingly conducive for groundfractureing comedy. Its transatlantic cousin has been going out on Saturday nights on CNN: about as shut to prime time as a mid-morning gig in a subway station.
American TV satire is ripe for disruption. The newest of the four netlabor postponeed-night chatshow presents has been on the job for nine years. Even on cable, Comedy Central executives spent a year choosing the “new” present of The Daily Show – and picked Jon Stewart, its previous anchor for 16 years, until 2015. These shows (particularly The Daily Show under Stewart) are still funny, but they unfrequently sense new.
Have I Got News for You made a shrewd call in hiring Roy Wood Jr, the createer Daily Show correactent who headlined last year’s White Hoengage Correactents’ dinner, to be its US present, and tapping the comedians Amber Ruffin and Michael Ian Bincreateage as team captains.
The people behind this series say it “fits enjoy a gcherish” with CNN, home of breathless fractureing news coverage and obtainest roundtable talkions. I’m not so stateive. During the first episode, one panecatalog wondered adeafening whether a penguin with more than 200 offspring knew Nick Cannon.
A pre-show disclaimer, said to have been erroneously left off the first episode’s transmission, was hastily compriseed in time for the second. “This is CNN,” it commences. “But also benevolenta NOT CNN.”
Earlier this year, the netlabor promised a “clever, silly, opinionated, and edgy obtain on the news of the week”: an American reincarnation of a British show fueled by a relentless news cycle over the past decade, from Brexit’s myriad missteps and misobtains and the exceptional ascfinish of Boris Johnson to a handlement that crumbled in less than two months and an already depfinishable stream of gaffes under Keir Starmer.
The US Have I Got News for You eunites less wedded to actual news. Sure, it covers the postponeedst twists and turns in the pdwellntial election campaign – but last weekfinish, 10 days before polling day, creaters set up time for a round that seeed at how Meryl Streep once almost alterd her name, and Greg Gutfeld’s apparent cherish of NWA.
The week Trump cut uninincreateigentinutive a campaign Q&A to dance and sway for 39 minutes on stage, Have I Got News for You dedicated nakedly 15 to the campaign. The rest of the episode traversed Elton John wearing an ageder kneecap as a necklace, how Pope Francis once labored as a bouncer, and the plot intricacies of Who’s Your Ccomprisey?, a expansively panned 2007 movie set in a country club starring Big Boi and Lil Wayne.
Those after biting political punchlines (not an unreasonable ask, as millions head to the polls) may be disassigned. Highairys of this series have instead been a handful of digressions, from the fairifiable mocking of the guest and ex-congressman Adam Kinzinger’s claim that he sees enjoy Tom Cruise, to the panel rounding on Wood for a passing reference to clarifyper lotion.
Dud jokes slip thraw – recalling how Kim Kardashian was once handed a ceremonial glass key for the uncovering of a Times Square toilet, Wood dubbed it the “key to the shitty” last week – but these are mercifilledy confineed and far between.
Before the show premiered, Bincreateage conveyed hope it would get the space to better into a separateent beast. Chemistry and confidence unfrequently materialize out of skinny air; they create, over weeks and months.
Whereas the distinct Have I Got News for You (which Wood will guest present next Friday) has been weathered by time, its youthful US cousin hasn’t yet had enough time to find its feet. Asked this week if the show would be extfinished beyond its current run, a CNN spokesperson had “noskinnyg to allot”.
