Chocolate News Premieres Tonight on Comedy Central

Tonight, Comedy Central will premiere its latest fake news show, a faux black news magazine series, called Chocolate News, starring David Alan Grier.

"This is the perfect chance," Mr. Grier told The New York Times' Felicia R. Lee today. "I wanted something where I could have the clearest and most unfiltered artistic and creative voice. I had done the sitcom thing to lesser and lesser degrees of success."

Back in August, we wrote about Jeremy Bronson, a writer for Chocolate News, who moved over to Comedy Central after a six-year stint working for NBC News in Washington, most recently as a producer for MSNBC's Hardball with Chris Matthews.

At the time, Mr. Bronson promised us that the new show would be "funnier than Morley Safer."

In recent days, a number of TV critics have reviewed the first episode. The verdict?

Linda Stasi of The New York Post writes that the series "is funny like Chappelle, edgy like In Living Color and smart like The Daily Show, but without the smugness."

"It also dares to go where no PC show would dare to go," she adds.

Others were less smitten.

"The timing of Chocolate News seems especially odd given the possibility of an Obama presidency," writes Rob Owen in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

You can see a trailer of the first episode here.