HIGNFY US Pilot

[Satchmo Distel]

A pilot was apparently made in 2012 [Correction: 2009] but I can't find it anywhere

https://www.theblacklistnyc.com/gotnews

Host: Sam Seder
Team Captains Greg Giraldo and Michael Ian Black
Guests: Not sure but Seder has said that one of them was Magan McCain and she was shit.

Has anyone seen it?

[up_the_hampipe]

Greg Giraldo died in 2010 so there must have been a horrific smell in that studio.

Pilots that don't go to series don't tend to show up anywhere, they're either in some tape archive or just gone. If it was someone's passion project, they might have a tape and throw it online. But I'd imagine a panel show would just be a network's idea so I doubt it'll be found.

If anyone's interested, though, there was a US version Never Mind The Buzzcocks hosted by Marc Maron that made it to series on VH1. There weren't any clips around for years, but recently an episode featuring David Cross was uploaded herehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0OhlBK65MHU

[Satchmo Distel]

Sorry: Correction: 2009

[Small Man Big Horse]

A pilot was apparently made in 2012 [Correction: 2009] but I can't find it anywhere

https://www.theblacklistnyc.com/gotnews

Host: Sam Seder
Team Captains Greg Giraldo and Michael Ian Black
Guests: Not sure but Seder has said that one of them was Magan McCain and she was shit.

Has anyone seen it?

Someone on Reddit found a very short 2 minute clip on Vimeo: https://www.reddit.com/r/panelshow/comments/5862x0/clip_from_have_i_got_news_for_you_nbc_pilot_2009/ - but I haven't been able to find any more of it, the MySpleen private torrent site is normally a good place to find unaired pilots, but they don't have it sadly.

Edit: There was a 2012 pilot as well apparently, with the same cast but with Sherrod Small replacing Greg Giraldo.

https://deadline.com/2012/11/tbs-pilots-u-s-version-of-british-panel-show-have-i-got-news-for-you-371096/

Edit again: According to this Radio Times article the 2012 pilot was the third time the US had attempted to recreate the show - https://www.radiotimes.com/tv/comedy/have-i-got-news-for-usa/ - it's a really unpleasantly snarky article though, where the writer boasts about not having heard of Michael Ian Black or any of the others, and comes across as a fucking idiot.

[JamesTC]

Is it an assault rifle in a bathtub?

[Bigfella]

What we would all love: a pleasing expose of American political thought.  Is there any chance of that?

[dissolute ocelot]

Fuck, Meghan McCain, star of The View, America's version of Loose Women? Pointless quasifeminist gossip site Jezebel obsessively chronicles everything MM does, which is one of the more (only) amusing things they do.

It's hard to remember when British HIGNFY was launched. Were Merton and Hislop much loved institutions back then? Were they young and edgy? Who are the American equivalents? Although with the American tradition of late night topical news comedy like The Daily Show, I guess it's not completely improbable that it would work.

[Satchmo Distel]

McCain's husband is the founder of extreme right bullshit machine The Federalist and she tends to just regurgitate his talking points, resulting in her being much farther right than her dad despite her entire public profile resting on his legacy. She's notorious for this clip:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s0m_GlBMeDI&ab_channel=scallly

[McDead]

A goddamn tub of freakin' lard

[Small Man Big Horse]

It's hard to remember when British HIGNFY was launched. Were Merton and Hislop much loved institutions back then? Were they young and edgy? Who are the American equivalents? Although with the American tradition of late night topical news comedy like The Daily Show, I guess it's not completely improbable that it would work.

My (possibly completely false) memory is that Merton was a much loved comedian know for his bizarre flights of fancy, while at least between my sixteen year old friends and I we didn't have a clue who Hislop was, or, shamefully, what Private Eye was either.

[greencalx]

I'm not sure any of the three regulars were particularly well-known before HIGNFY propelled them to stardom.

Deayton was probably the closest to a household name, at least among Radio 4 households who tuned into Radio Active during the 80s. I was also vaguely aware of him at that time through his work with Rowan Atkinson. 1990 seemed to be a good year for Deayton, what with him showing up on One Foot in the Grave as well.

Merton was up-and-coming at the time, his main TV work being on Whose line... before HIGNFY can along. Perhaps that made him a bit more visible than Deayton, though Deayton had been on national TV/radio for a good decade longer.

Hislop probably had the lowest profile. I was peripherally aware that he was involved in Spitting Image, and I think he may have been a semi-regular on the News Quiz during the 80s.

[Andy147]

Ian Hislop had become a bit more famous a year before HIGNFY began, when Private Eye lost the libel case against Sonia Sutcliffe, and he said to the press "If that's justice, then I'm a banana."

[curiousoranges]

Looks like those clowns in congress did it again. What a bunch of clowns.

[McDead]

"Those palookas at City Hall are being a real pain in my sweet ass!"

(American Angus Deayton) "In what way?"

[stonkers]

Have I Got News For Y'all

[McChesney Duntz]

There already pretty much is a US HIGNFY equivalent, only on the radio and with a lot fewer Boris-types on the panel:

https://www.npr.org/programs/wait-wait-dont-tell-me/