An American Have I Got News for You? It’s no calamity, but no match for the original

To judge by the extensive excerpts online, this fourth attempt at transplanting the show to the US is cheerfully competent but low on barbs

Just when it seemed American politics couldn’t get more unhinged, CNN has gone for broke with a US reboot of venerable BBC quiz panel series, Have I Got News For You. Why Donald Trump’s least favourite cable network would pick the middle of an election year to parachute in a quintessentially British comedy institution is anybody’s guess – talking to the New York Times last week, University of Connecticut professor of communication David D’Alessio described the launch as a “crazy decision”. “Has someone at CNN lost their mind?” he wondered. 
Materialising in a news cycle dominated by Donald Trump’s pet-eating conspiracy theories, the American edition of Have I Got News For You? has its work cut out cutting through the noise. Judging from the extensive outtakes from the launch episode floating around the internet, it is unlikely to achieve anywhere near the prominence of the BBC original, which introduced future Prime Minister Boris Johnson to millions of Britons courtesy of his many stints as guest-host.
But CNN’s take on the format – while nowhere near as barbed as the original – is by no means a calamity. Whatever else it is, the Stars and Stripes Have I Got News For You is not one of those transatlantic follies that should never have survived the first pitch meeting (see horrific American tilts at The Inbetweeners, Men Behaving Badly and so on). 
Instead of a rotating cast of anchors, CNN has hired former Daily Show correspondent Roy Wood Jr as quizmaster. In the Paul Merton/Ian Hislop role of team captains are stands-up Amber Ruffin (funny and off-the-cuff) and Michael Ian Black (starchy and trying-too-hard). No politician has yet been tempted to appear – though Wood Jr’s dream guests include prominent figures such as  Nikki Haley, Ted Cruz and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
Wood Jr told the New York Times that British political figures are “more open to being lampooned”. And so, rather than the American equivalent of Ruth Davidson or Jess Phillips, the guests in episode one are “libertarian pundit” Matt Welch (Ruffin’s team) and actor and comedian Robin Thede (seated alongside Black).
Wood is a slick host, and there were no first-night jitters. It may have helped that he’s been here before. This is the fourth attempt at transplanting Have I Got News For You to the US, and Wood was involved in one of the previous pilots that failed to make it to the air. 
The format this time round closely mirrored the original. The instalment opened with a round of clips where the teams had to guess the attendant news story.  A reference to dogs led – quelle surprise – to a back-and-forth about Donald Trump’s dogs-and-cats-eating claims at the Presidential debate with Kamala Harris. There was also a gag about fans of the new Beetlejuice sequel mimicking its wacky dance routines on TikTok. Cut to Donald Trump doing something weird with his hands.
One widespread concern was that the series would poke fun at Trump and his Republicans while letting Harris and her Democrats off the hook. Such complaints are often levelled as political comedy in the US, though, to his credit, Jon Stewart on The Daily Show was as critical of Joe Biden as he was of Donald Trump when he returned to the series this year. 
CNN’s Have I Got News For You tried to satirise both sides. In an Odd One Out section, Wood Jr. brought up Democratic Vice Presidential candidate Tim Walz’s addiction in the 1990s to the Dreamcast games console while also tweaking his Republican equivalent, JD Vance, over his limp handshake. 
That was followed by a “Are You Lie-Curious?” segment in which the panellists had to select a real headline from a line-up of three. In the case of Elon Musk, it had to do with his sister and her career making erotic movies. It was an opportunity to have a laugh at the expense of the tech billionaire – and for Thede to claim that Kesha “was a Scottish name”. 
American comedy is often derided as hackneyed and inane. While that’s true of the invariably dire Saturday Night Live, more political shows such as Last Week Tonight with John Oliver and The Daily Show are great at skewering both sides of the aisle. This new Have I Got News For You has a long way to go before becoming anywhere as near as prominent – and you do wonder how CNN’s British-born boss Mark Thompson was talked by Hat Trick co-founder Jimmy Mulville into importing the format. But what could have been a disaster is instead cheerfully competent  – and nowhere near the embarrassment it might have been.
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