

This is hilarious. Apparently a new Chinese talk show called The Banquet was broadcast on China’s Ningxia Satellite TV this January and, as Stephen Colbert says (and as China tends to do), it ‘lovingly violates intellectual property rights’ of The Colbert Report. Meaning, the entire opening sequence is essentially identical, down to the graphics and theme music. Colbert took no hesitation in lovingly ripping the show apart.

Of course this isn’t the first time China has liberally borrowed creative concepts from a popular western TV show (remember when Conan O’Brien likewise called out a Chinese TV show for ripping off his whole opening sequence?) but the worst part of all is that China’s knock-off entirely defeats the purpose of the original show and is instead replaced with…*shiver*…Chinese television-appropriate satire.

The Atlantic explains:

In a typical Banquet gag, the host claims he is exhausted because he has so many women to support. But the females in question aren’t mistresses. Instead, he quips that they’re “my mother, my wife, my daughter.” (The joke isn’t any funnier in Chinese.) Elsewhere, viewers suffer through laugh tracks, clownish sound effects (“boink!”), and excruciating ‘joke cues’ that spoon-feed humor to the audience. Producers feel safe deviating from this formula only when relying on a different, proven format—hence Ningxia Satellite’s ill-fated plagiarism of Colbert.

Here’s Colbert’s take:





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