Join or Die with Craig Ferguson on History Channel

With all the turnover in late night over the past year, I’m still adjusting. While the new shows are all pretty good, I still miss Dave, Craig, Jon, and faux Colbert. I heard Craig Ferguson would have a new history focused chat show and had no idea what that might be like. It premiered this week with two episodes – political blunders and bad medical advice. Each episode starts with six topics in the category. The panel discusses and eliminates before a winner is chosen at the end.

Some thoughts after watching the first night …

• A monologue about historical events is a brilliant move. While some of the topics may still come up in current monologues, they can lead to groans since it’s such old news. But this is history, so that’s the whole point. There also isn’t a reliance on current events, a slow news day/week doesn’t weaken the monologue.
• Good chance you’ll learn something new. In the bad medical advice episode, mercury was one of the topics. This is where I learned that a mad hatter is actually a thing. Hat makers used a solution containing mercury and the fumes wound up driving them mad. Link to something about it on the internet.
• Solid guests, at least to start. The format from these first two seems to be someone knowledgeable about that week’s topic, a lesser known comic, and a celebrity. I expect this would keep up since Craig has enough celebrity friends.
• Generally, getting a monologue from Craig and having him chat with guests is all I really need.

Obviously I give this a 10/6.

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iTunes – Premiere is Free