The CW debuted their new comedy show ‘The Great American Joke Off’ in March, hosted by comedian and Daily Show correspondent Dulcé Sloan, and Americans this is your chance to get on board to what we’ve needed for so long – a truly great panel show.

Why You Should Be Watching ‘The Great American Joke Off’

What makes this show different you might say if you’re a devoted British panel show enthusiast who has seen so many fail in America? For one, we’ve imported Dan Patterson, the producer of Whose Line Is It Anyway?, both the British original version and the American one, as well as the long-running but now finished British show Mock the Week, to create this new series. What Patterson himself has done is take many of the best elements that worked for those shows, and in particular Mock the Week, and likewise brought them along. This includes not only the segments themselves but also many of the incredible British comedians including Ed Gamble, Glenn Moore, Rhys James, and Milton Jones.

Ultimately I guess then this is to say what makes it different is that it’s not that different at all from British panel shows. Indeed we have Sloan, who I’ve always found a delight on the Daily Show and I feel likewise here. Similarly we have our own American comedians, who seemed a bit stiff at first especially compared to their British counterparts, but who have grown in their sureness as they rapidfire jokes, but really we need a show that just works and this one works.

Now there’s a question of uncertainty about whether this show will get the audience it deserves, one of the inspirations for writing this article, especially since The CW is still known as the network for teen soaps as the Whose Line stars continually are asked “Will you ever bring back Whose Line?” only to be reminded that in fact the show has been on The CW for years.

Which Will Win? Patterson’s ‘The Great American Joke Off’ or Patterson’s ‘Mock the Week’

Interestingly enough as well Amazon Freevee just announced they’ll be brining Mock the Week over to the United States, co-exec produced by Dan Patterson and Trevor Noah, which feels like deja vu as well as a Patterson self-own as far as competition when ‘The Great American Joke Off’ has lifted so many segments from Mock the Week already it is essentially diet Mock the Week. Even if both shows are great, and they could be, I just cannot see a landscape where both survive.

That’s not to say though I recommend seeing which one wins out, as I feel ‘The Great American Joke Off’ is a more than worthy panel show that Americans should be watching now. So I hope you give this show a chance, discover some incredible comics in the process, and truly ROTFL as I do each and every episode.