Acclaimed comedian Roy Wood Jr. will host the U.S. version of “Have I Got News for You,” the long-running U.K. comedy series, CNN announced Thursday.
The 10-episode limited series, set to premiere Sept. 14, will air Saturdays at 9 p.m. Eastern on the 24-hour news network. Episodes will be available to stream the following day on Max, formerly HBO Max.
The show will be produced by Hat Trick Productions, which has produced the U.K.’s version since 1990.
Wood, who served for eight years as a correspondent for “The Daily Show,” will lead the “comedy quiz show” with two team captains who have not yet been announced, CNN said.
The show “delivers comic observations, from the satirical to the surreal, through the lens of a news quiz show,” according to the network.
The series will include a rotation of guests, including high-profile entertainers, politicians and comedians, who will participate in the news quizzes.
Wood poked fun at former President Trump’s recent reference to “Black jobs” in his statement Thursday included in a press release.
“For far too long immigrants have been coming to America and taking black jobs, kudos to CNN and the immigrants at Hat Trick Productions for bringing a Black job to the States,” Wood said.
“It is an honor to be a part of such a hallowed British institution to help make sense of the American institutions of chaos, name calling, disinformation, reality television and the 8-hour news cycle,” he added.
Wood headlined the White House correspondents’ dinner in 2023, delivering fiery punchlines and the event’s highest ratings since 2017, CNN said.
He took aim at President Biden’s age and knocked Trump as the “king of scandals,” while also roasting other media figures in his speech.
“There’s too many Trump scandals to keep up with,” Wood said at the dinner last year.
“Can we just all be honest and say that the Trump arrest didn’t hit like we thought it was going to hit?” Wood said after Trump’s arraignment last year in his New York hush money case, which has since returned a guilty verdict on all 34 criminal charges. “The Trump arrest was like a pot brownie that you ate four hours ago. Do I feel justice? This doesn’t feel like justice.”
“Let me try one of them Georgia arraignment brownies, maybe that’ll hit,” he added.
He noted Republicans were not alone in their newsworthy scandals, saying, “There’s been no scandal more damaging than the scandal of: Is Joe Biden awake?”
“Say what you want about our president, but when you wake up from that nap, work gets done,” he added.