I watch these shows all the time, as with many other British game shows like 8 Cats Out of 10 Does Countdown, QI, Have I Got News for You, etc. they're a great watch, host & guests all got quick wits.

There was a web-series of Have I Got News For You with no studio audience. In one episode they used a laugh track and in another they didn't. I wanted to like the no-laugh one more, but it felt wrong. However, the with-laugh one sounded forced. This shows the problem, fake laugh tracks sound out of place, no laughing sounds sounds awkward. Real studio audiences like British panel shows have (unless they're tricking me!) are the best, when suitable. For this reason, my preference is:

1) Proper studio audience.
2) No laugh track.
3) Laugh track.

I can understand why producers use it. Laughing is very much a group thing and laughter is somewhat infectious - it's not about telling you when it laugh, but subconsciously making watching a TV program more of a social thing even to people watching on their own.

>> ^srd:

>> ^lavoll:
why are they totally ignoring the woman?

If you go watch the entire episode on youtube, you'll see that she's obnoxious, terribly unfunny (see "meat pie on a needle" in this segment, one of her better jokes).
Also, according to some youtube commenter, she succumbed to cancer shortly after the filming of that episode. Since I'm not british I can't confirm or deny.


Linda Smith

Yeah, she had ovarian cancer and died in 2006. She wasn't bad (if I recall correctly) in 'Have I Got News For You' another British panel show. She could be very witty at times, I'll have to see if I can dig out a clip at some point.

I saw a repeat of "Have I Got News For You" yesterday and Hugh Dennis (the guy on the right who answered the driving license question) was the guest presenter and covered this same story.

I wonder which show was on first!

Tags for this video have been changed from 'Reginald D Hunter, batman, have I got news for you' to 'Reginald D Hunter, bill bailey, batman, have I got news for you' - edited by alien_concept

>> ^Dumbledorito:
Plus, the "quizmaster" format is very familiar to anyone who attended school in the UK. "Have I got News for You" and "QI" are, I think, the best of the bunch.

I always liked Shooting Stars, I hope they bring that back.

>> ^spoco2:
I really enjoy QI... but MY GOD, how many of these shows ARE THERE?
It's like a plague.
And they all seem to have the same people on them anyway.
Weird.
Or just really slack tv execs


To be fair, they only get maybe 9-13 shows per "season," and the people they have on them are genuinely funny. Plus, the "quizmaster" format is very familiar to anyone who attended school in the UK. "Have I got News for You" and "QI" are, I think, the best of the bunch.

And while they make fun of Americans for being fat, the Scots come in for quite a lot of overweight humor, as do their fellow countrymen (half of their politicians appear to be of the Sta-Puft variety). And its not like we're slim and trim as a nation anyway.

>> ^dgandhi:
This and QI have got to be the cheapest TV productions this side of Faux News, and yet we in the US can't manage to cobble together half a dozen celebs who can manage to be more extemporaneously interesting than hollywood squares. It makes me laugh, but the quality gap saddens me.


There's plenty of others, of varying quality (Have I Got News For You, Mock the Week and at times Never Mind the Buzzcocks are good). I was wondering the other day why all the quiz-coms (that's what our schedulers seem to want us to call them) are British. It's a simple format, get a topic (current affairs, public opinion, music, whatever), a host who's good at improvised comedy and several similarly minded guests and make sure all of them have an IQ of above 50. 8 out of 10 cats fails occasionally on the last requirement (Kelly Osbourne, for example). I don't know if it's been tried in the US or elsewhere. I can imagine American producers getting Kevin Federline and Paris Hilton as guests and then wondering why it bombs.

You have got The Big Bang Theory, which makes up for a lot.

aloha, fellow TED pimp!

another opportunity for discard-diving, and Have I Got Kippers For YOU!

Ah, yeah: forgot it was a skit from Have I Got News For You...(it's from BBC2!)

Or it's BBC One's Have I Got News for You - a satirical look at the weeks news at 9:00pm, I can't remember which day. Depends what show you're asking about.

I dont finde the daily show that funny but it seems most people do, it is entertaining and intresting though, do americans watch "have i got news for you" ore QI i find politicks mixed with on the fly comidy of a more abstract and hap hazerd nature more my cup of tea anny one else?