Patriot Act with Hasan Minhaj

Patriot Act, an appealing comedy-talk show hybrid from longtime collaborators Hasan Minhaj and Prashanth Venkataramanujam, isn’t going to singlehandedly swing things Netflix’s way, but it is the streamer’s best offering yet in the genre. ... The result is an engrossing mix of deep dives, personal asides, and current events, all delivered with Minhaj’s winning aplomb.

In the second episode, he refers to his show jokingly as “a woke TED Talk” and that gets it pretty right, except this woke TED Talk is not only informative and incisive, but funny.

The result is bracing, funny, informative, and occasionally, like Last Week Tonight, a little dry. But it’s homework that you wanna do, even if you never forget that it’s ultimately an assignment. I don’t consider that description a knock on the show.

He never sits behind a desk, as he often did as a correspondent on “The Daily Show.” Instead, he stands and gestures, cajoles and emphasizes, straight to camera. This doesn’t always work. ... But it is different, and in an otherwise crowded field, that matters. As for content and format, Patriot Act has thus far made a couple smart and pointed choices. ... Neither of Patriot Act’s first two episodes are necessarily tied to the events of the week that preceded them, but they still feel timely.