Have I Got News for You: how does the US version compare?

“Big up Keir Starmer,” declared a British prisoner released early from jail last month. “Well, he said more than that,” joked Charlie Brooker, that week’s guest host on Have I Got News for You. “But his sentence got cut short.”

Cue muffled laughter, and groans. “Very good,” lied Ian Hislop, a veteran team captain on the long-running UK comedy panel show. When a moth was spotted flying around the studio, Paul Merton, the other captain, quipped: “I think it’s jumped out of the script.”

Have I Got News for You, halfway through its 68th series, is a British institution. At its best, the franchise remains cutting and snarky. But institutions, however successful, attract dust. More than a handful of its 600-odd episodes have felt a bit stale, with sharp satire making way for middling puns and hot takes.

When Have I Got News for You finally started a US run in September, its producers were presented with a golden opportunity to take risks, do something different and stand out from the crowd.

In the UK, the series airs on Friday nights on BBC One – a central fixture on the national broadcaster’s flagship channel, but hardly conducive for groundbreaking comedy. Its transatlantic cousin has been going out on Saturday nights on CNN: about as close to prime time as a mid-morning gig in a subway station.

American TV satire is ripe for disruption. The newest of the four network late-night chatshow hosts has been on the job for nine years. Even on cable, Comedy Central executives spent a year choosing the “new” host 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 rarely feel fresh.

Have I Got News for You made a shrewd call in hiring Roy Wood Jr, the former Daily Show correspondent who headlined last year’s White House Correspondents’ dinner, to be its US host, and tapping the comedians Amber Ruffin and Michael Ian Black as team captains.

The people behind this series say it “fits like a glove” with CNN, home of breathless breaking news coverage and earnest roundtable discussions. I’m not so sure. During the first episode, one panelist wondered aloud 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 added in time for the second. “This is CNN,” it begins. “But also kinda NOT CNN.”

Earlier this year, the network promised a “smart, silly, opinionated, and edgy take 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 mistakes and the extraordinary rise of Boris Johnson to a government that crumbled in less than two months and an already reliable stream of gaffes under Keir Starmer.

The US Have I Got News for You appears less wedded to actual news. Sure, it covers the latest twists and turns in the presidential election campaign – but last weekend, 10 days before polling day, producers found time for a round that looked at how Meryl Streep once almost changed her name, and Greg Gutfeld’s apparent love of NWA.

The week Trump cut short a campaign Q&A to dance and sway for 39 minutes on stage, Have I Got News for You dedicated barely 15 to the campaign. The rest of the episode traversed Elton John wearing an old kneecap as a necklace, how Pope Francis once worked as a bouncer, and the plot intricacies of Who’s Your Caddy?, a widely 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 disappointed. Highlights of this series have instead been a handful of digressions, from the justifiable mocking of the guest and ex-congressman Adam Kinzinger’s claim that he looks like Tom Cruise, to the panel rounding on Wood for a passing reference to stripper lotion.

Dud jokes slip through – recalling how Kim Kardashian was once handed a ceremonial glass key for the opening of a Times Square toilet, Wood dubbed it the “key to the shitty” last week – but these are mercifully few and far between.

Before the show premiered, Black expressed hope it would get the space to evolve into a distinct beast. Chemistry and confidence rarely materialize out of thin air; they build, over weeks and months.

Whereas the original Have I Got News for You (which Wood will guest host next Friday) has been weathered by time, its young US cousin hasn’t yet had enough time to find its feet. Asked this week if the show would be extended beyond its current run, a CNN spokesperson had “nothing to share”.