mtbc | Television formats where comedians compete

Last year I mentioned watching UK television shows such as Have I Got News for You (1990), QI (2003) and, a favorite of mine, Would I Lie to You? (2007). Other fun shows include Room 101 (1994) and the UK original version of Taskmaster (2015). They have in common celebrities, often stand-up comedians, also in some cases actors, politicians, etc., competing gently against each other in some game format. BBC Radio 4 also broadcasts many examples of the genre, a venerable classic being Just a Minute.

I was trying to think back to what similar shows I used to watch in the US and very little comes to mind. The American adaptation Whose Line Is It Anyway? (1998) doesn't quite feel like the kind of thing, maybe something more like NPR's Wait Wait… Don't Tell Me!. It's not that the formats haven't been tried, they just mostly haven't worked, at least to my knowledge or so as to catch my interest. I wonder about that difference.