Tough Crowd
| Tough Crowd with Colin Quinn | |
|---|---|
| Created by | Colin Quinn |
| Starring |
Colin Quinn Nick DiPaolo Greg Giraldo Judy Gold Jim Norton Patrice O'Neal Keith Robinson Rich Vos |
| Country of origin | United States |
| No. of episodes | 200+ |
| Production | |
| Executive producer(s) | Colin Quinn Liz Stanton Ken Ober |
| Running time | 21 minutes |
| Release | |
| Original network | Comedy Central |
| Original release | December 9, 2002 – November 4, 2004 |
Tough Crowd with Colin Quinn was a comedic talk show which aired on Comedy Central from 2002 to 2004. The show featured host Colin Quinn and a panel of comedian guests, discussing politics, current events, and social issues.
In 2002, comedian Colin Quinn was given his own show on NBC, titled The Colin Quinn Show, which was broadcast live from the Saturday Night Live soundstage in New York City. There were three 30-minute episodes, which aired on Mondays at 9:30 p.m., from March 11, 2002 to March 25, 2002. Although NBC chose not to continue with the show, Quinn took a similarly-themed show to Comedy Central later on that year. On December 9, 2002, Tough Crowd With Colin Quinn debuted on Comedy Central with an eight-episode test series, which ran Mondays through Thursdays, until December 19, 2002. The show was picked up in January 2003, and the regular series began its 21-week run on March 10, 2003. The show aired weeknights at 11:30 p.m. ET, immediately following The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.
The show was presented as an alternative, unpolished and more accessible political "round-table" discussion/shouting-match program in the manner of CNN's Crossfire, taking cue from Bill Maher's Politically Incorrect. The guests on the panel were usually comedians who had been given topics in advance on which to prepare material. Quinn's regular guests consisted mainly of Comedy Central affiliated comedians from the Comedy Cellar comedy club in New York City. The club was renowned for its postperformance roundtable discussions with comedians in the audience about political issues. These exchanges were the inspiration for Tough Crowd.
The show would open with a monologue by Quinn. Quinn would then stand in front of a pool table, or sit on the edge of it, very often sipping coffee, eating or perusing through a newspaper. Usually, there were four comedians as guests, however, in some episodes there were five comedians, and on very rare occasions, only three comedians. On the episodes which featured five comedians, four of them would be seated in chairs, as was the normal fashion, while the fifth comedian would sit off to the side, on a bench. Whenever one of the four in the chairs told a joke that didn't get a laugh, Quinn would banish that comedian over to the bench, and replace him with the person who was previously on the bench. Quinn would introduce current events that were going on in the news, and would moderate (or attempt to moderate, sometimes futilely) the discussion. Most of the show was the comedians discussing these topics. Near the end of each episode, there was usually a sketch of some sort, followed by each of the guests doing a brief monologue on a particular topic that was discussed earlier in the episode.
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