“Big up Keir Starmer,” declared a British prisoner launched early from jail final month. “Properly, he mentioned greater than that,” joked Charlie Brooker, that week’s visitor host on Have I Received Information for You. “However his sentence obtained lower brief.”
Cue muffled laughter, and groans. “Superb,” lied Ian Hislop, a veteran workforce captain on the long-running UK comedy panel present. When a moth was noticed flying across the studio, Paul Merton, the opposite captain, quipped: “I feel it’s jumped out of the script.”
Have I Received Information for You, midway by means of its 68th collection, is a British establishment. At its greatest, the franchise stays reducing and snarky. However establishments, nevertheless profitable, entice mud. Greater than a handful of its 600-odd episodes have felt a bit stale, with sharp satire making means for middling puns and scorching takes.
When Have I Received Information for You lastly began a US run in September, its producers had been offered with a golden alternative to take dangers, do one thing completely different and stand out from the group.
Within the UK, the collection airs on Friday nights on BBC One – a central fixture on the nationwide broadcaster’s flagship channel, however hardly conducive for groundbreaking comedy. Its transatlantic cousin has been going out on Saturday nights on CNN: about as near prime time as a mid-morning gig in a subway station.
American TV satire is ripe for disruption. The latest of the 4 community late-night chatshow hosts has been on the job for 9 years. Even on cable, Comedy Central executives spent a yr selecting the “new” host of The Day by day Present – and picked Jon Stewart, its earlier anchor for 16 years, till 2015. These reveals (notably The Day by day Present below Stewart) are nonetheless humorous, however they not often really feel recent.
Have I Received Information for You made a shrewd name in hiring Roy Wooden Jr, the previous Day by day Present correspondent who headlined final yr’s White Home Correspondents’ dinner, to be its US host, and tapping the comedians Amber Ruffin and Michael Ian Black as workforce captains.
The individuals behind this collection say it “matches like a glove” with CNN, residence of breathless breaking information protection and earnest roundtable discussions. I’m not so positive. In the course of the first episode, one panelist questioned aloud whether or not a penguin with greater than 200 offspring knew Nick Cannon.
A pre-show disclaimer, mentioned to have been erroneously left off the primary episode’s transmission, was unexpectedly added in time for the second. “That is CNN,” it begins. “But additionally kinda NOT CNN.”
Earlier this yr, the community promised a “sensible, foolish, opinionated, and edgy tackle the information of the week”: an American reincarnation of a British present fueled by a relentless information cycle over the previous decade, from Brexit’s myriad missteps and errors and the extraordinary rise of Boris Johnson to a authorities that crumbled in lower than two months and an already dependable stream of gaffes below Keir Starmer.
The US Have I Received Information for You seems much less wedded to precise information. Certain, it covers the most recent twists and turns within the presidential election marketing campaign – however final weekend, 10 days earlier than polling day, producers discovered time for a spherical that checked out how Meryl Streep as soon as nearly modified her identify, and Greg Gutfeld’s obvious love of NWA.
The week Trump lower brief a marketing campaign Q&A to bounce and sway for 39 minutes on stage, Have I Received Information for You devoted barely 15 to the marketing campaign. The remainder of the episode traversed Elton John carrying an previous kneecap as a necklace, how Pope Francis as soon as labored as a bouncer, and the plot intricacies of Who’s Your Caddy?, a broadly panned 2007 film set in a rustic membership starring Large Boi and Lil Wayne.
These after biting political punchlines (not an unreasonable ask, as thousands and thousands head to the polls) could also be dissatisfied. Highlights of this collection have as an alternative been a handful of digressions, from the justifiable mocking of the visitor and ex-congressman Adam Kinzinger’s declare that he seems like Tom Cruise, to the panel rounding on Wooden for a passing reference to stripper lotion.
Dud jokes slip by means of – recalling how Kim Kardashian was as soon as handed a ceremonial glass key for the opening of a Occasions Sq. bathroom, Wooden dubbed it the “key to the shitty” final week – however these are mercifully few and much between.
Earlier than the present premiered, Black expressed hope it could get the area to evolve into a definite beast. Chemistry and confidence not often materialize out of skinny air; they construct, over weeks and months.
Whereas the unique Have I Received Information for You (which Wooden will visitor host subsequent Friday) has been weathered by time, its younger US cousin hasn’t but had sufficient time to seek out its toes. Requested this week if the present can be prolonged past its present run, a CNN spokesperson had “nothing to share”.
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