Is it cos I is British? Ali G has arrived on American TV screens and influential reviewers are not amused. Hardly surprising, says Mark Lawson – comedy rarely crosses the Atlantic ‘humour gulf’ successfully. Guardian/UK Uhhh, I’m sorry, it’s not because it’s British humor. For some inexplicable reason, I caught the HBO debut of this tripe, and I’m someone who thrives on British humor. But I’ll never watch it again. The essayist misses the point (is it cos he am British?) even though he grasps the central conceit of the show, in which an offensive, puerile and — let’s not shy away from it — stupid interviewer insinuates himself into various situations.

Entirely character-driven, the basic joke in the show – the unwillingness of officialdom to question the racial and intellectual credentials of their questioner – becomes even more pointed in a nation where the right to racial self-definition is widely accepted and terrible consequences can follow from questioning someone’s professional competence.

Even if Edwin Meese or Newt Gingrich or any of the others had felt that there was something a little odd about their interlocutor, they would have been well aware of the potential newspaper headlines or even lawsuits which might result from throwing him out. For this reason, the American editions of Da Ali G Show may be its creator’s most powerful commentary on a culture which is terrified of giving offence to anyone at all.

So American viewers are either going to be the ones who get the joke and find it too painful to be entertaining or funny, or they’re going to be the ones who are too myopic to get it at all. Sort of like the division right down the middle of the American public over George Bush’s credentials. Nobody on either side of the 49%/51% cultural divide finds him funny either.