Globe and Mail TV critic John Doyle isn't prepared to give The Colbert Report the benefit of any doubt.

The Colbert Report is awful. Honestly, it is a one-joke sketch stretched to appalling tedium. ...

Often Colbert is uncannily like O'Reilly or Scarborough, or a hundred other wannabies. But it's funny for five minutes, tops. This is a comedy sketch, worth doing on the Daily Show occasionally. At 30 minutes, four nights a week, it's drivel.

He accuses it of frat boy humour and liked both The Rick Mercer Report or This Hour Has 22 Minutes w-a-a-y better.