Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Have I Got News For You’ On CNN/Max, A Comedy Current-Events Quiz Show With Roy Wood Jr., Amber Ruffin And Michael Ian Black

Based on the long-running British series, Have I Got News For You is a comedy current-events quiz show. Roy Wood Jr. is the host and moderator, and he asks questions about the week’s events to two teams, and gives fake points. The team “captains” are regulars Amber Ruffin and Michael Ian Black. The other member of each team is a weekly guest: In the first episode, Ruffin was teamed with journalist Matt Welch and Black was teamed with comedian Robin Thede.

HAVE I GOT NEWS FOR YOU: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: Roy Wood Jr. welcomes the audience to the first episode of Have I Got News For You and says, “I’m your host, Steve Harvey.”

The Gist: In the first game, Wood shows each team a set of clips that obliquely refer to a story from the past week, and the team tries to guess what the story is. A montage of Ben Franklin eating a cheesesteak, a dog in a hot dog bun and a MAGA gathering is supposed to represent the previous week’s debate between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris.

During the discussion of the debate, the four panelists try to figure out what word Harris wanted to say when she paused during one passionate rant against Trump. The consensus was “motherfucker,” which somehow wasn’t bleeped out on CNN.

The panel also gets quizzed on Taylor Swift’s endorsement of Harris, as well as what hypocritical habit a MAGA-supporting candidate for governor in North Carolina has, among other current events. They also did a “which one of these people is not like the others” quiz, giving the producers the opportunity to put together a four-headed graphic with Bruce Springsteen, Benjamin Netanyahu, M. Night Shyamalan and Gritty.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Take Last Week Tonight or The Daily Show, and pair it with Whose Line Is It Anyway, and you’ve got Have I Got News For You (which is produced by Hat Trick, the same company that produces Whose Line).

Our Take: The format of HIGNFY has been successful in the UK for 34 years, and it’s strange that it’s taken this long to bring the format to the US, given how many current-events comedy series have come and gone in that time. This version is definitely rough around the edges, and it fails to use its one-hour timeslot to its advantage, but it was funny simply because of the three people who are the series regulars.

CNN reruns Real Time With Bill Maher right before HIGNFY on Saturdays, and that show certainly depends on panelists and guests being both informative and funny off the cuff. HIGNFY leans more on the comedy part of that equation, and casting Wood, Ruffin and Black all have the capacity to be off-the-cuff hilarious, and they demonstrated that in the first episode. All three of them let off really funny lines that seemed improvised to us. And all three of them are very well-versed in current events, so their riffs are definitely informed by what they know from the week’s news.

The show is definitely going to rise or fall on the comedic strength of its guests. Welch, for instance, isn’t a comedian, and while he understood the assignment and gave some witty answers, Ruffin had to bail him out more often than not to get the bigger laughs. On the other hand, a comedian like Thede doesn’t need that kind of support, and could just banter with Black and everyone else with ease.

The show would have worked much better in a half-hour timeslot, given that the “quizzes” that were presented to the teams — it seemed that Wood asked Ruffin and Welch a whole lot more questions than he asked Thede and Black — didn’t really feel all that varied as the show went on. Even though the panel was still funny, things still got monotonous after awhile. The producers of After Midnight have realized than an hour’s worth of “fake game” format just doesn’t work and have had to change the formula, and we think the producers of HIGNFY will figure out the same thing if the series gets some time to work out the kinks.

Sex and Skin: Besides talking about the proclivities of that MAGA-supporting gubernatorial candidate, there’s no other sexual content.

Parting Shot: Wood mentions some “stories we’re watching” over the next week, with an altered photo of Joe Biden “quiet quitting” and an unaltered photo of Harris holding a scented candle.

Sleeper Star: We’ll give this to Amber Ruffin because she’s just a joy to watch.

Most Pilot-y Line: Again, the hour format is just to long and the “games” aren’t varied enough. Maybe the guests switching partners halfway through would help.

Our Call: STREAM IT. We’ll watch Have I Got News For You because of Wood, Ruffin and Black. But the format is certainly can use some improvement.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.