It always felt odd to me to see so many Canadians or British presenters on American political talk shows, and now even Quibi is getting into it and heavily marketing it self-aware as another American political talk show hosted by a Brit.
Are there any British political talk shows hosted by Americans or Canadians?
I’m not surprised. Moving to the U.S. to try to make it as a famous talk show host is just like moving to the U.S. to make it as a movie star. For whatever reason, the U.S. is where you move to become known worldwide in your profession. For what it’s worth, the following list is all the significant talk show hosts currently working (in the U.S.) that I know of. All come from nations where English is one of the major languages. I note that there doesn’t seem to be any from Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, or India. If you know of further hosts to add to this list, please do so:
Bill Maher (U.S.)
Samantha Bee (Canada)
Seth Meyers (U.S.)
John Oliver (U.K.)
Jimmy Fallon (U.S.)
James Corden (U.K.)
Jimmy Kimmel (U.S.)
Trevor Noah (South Africa)
Stephen Colbert (U.S.)
Conan O’Brien (U.S.)
Ellen DeGeneres (U.S.)
Lilly Singh (Canada)
John Oliver is now US citizen, as of 2019
Wonder if he is starting to have second thoughts…
Being a US citizen makes it a lot harder to deport him for being a thorn in the administration’s side.
And he can vote against Trump!
To the list above we can add Hassan Minhaj, who is American as well.
Samantha Bee has been a US citizen since 2014.
As far as I can determine online, James Corden, Trevor Noah, and Lilly Singh are yet not U.S. citizens.
The Australian Jim Jeffries had a late-night show on Comedy Central from 2017-9, although he became a naturalized US citizen during that time.
The Last Leg is hosted by an Australian. Closest I could get.
Mock The Week isn’t a British political talk show per se; it’s ostensibly a panel quiz show, featuring comedians riffing on current UK politics. Rather like NPR’s Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me, and like that show, politics feature frequently. Its host is the Irish comedian Dara O Briain.
Mock the Week is an example of something on British TV that no longer much exists on American TV - the celebrity panel quiz show. Shows like this used to be reasonably common in the 1950’s to the 1970’s on American TV, but then they gradually disappeared. A celebrity panel quiz show is one where there is each episode a group of celebrities (not all the same ones each episode), usually comedians, sometimes other kinds of actors, and occasionally other sorts of celebrities, act vaguely like contestants on a quiz show. Occasionally they seriously try to score points, but more often the show is just an excuse for them to make jokes, while the host of the show jokingly gives them points for what they say.