“If there is no freedom to criticize, praise is also meaningless,” one netizen commented (winning over 30,000 likes) under a Weibo post from the producers of stand-up comedy show Roast (《吐槽大会》) announcing they would postpone an episode originally scheduled for March 21 this year.

The program’s explanation, that a “lack of editing time” caused the delay, convinced no one. Audiences instead speculated that the show had gone a few jokes too far in the previous episode which took aim at the poor performances of basketball stars Zhou Qi and Guo Ailun. “Is it because of the sports community’s complaints after the last episode?” read one of the most-liked Weibo queries. “Has too much content been cut to leave enough for the new episode?” read another.

Roast, first broadcast in 2016, is a Chinese version of the American comedy series Comedy Central Roast, where celebrities take it in turns to mock each other. The show has rapidly become one of the most influential stand-up shows in China. The first season was viewed over 1.38 billion times by the time its final episode was aired in March 2017, and around 70 percent of reviewers gave it four out of five stars on Douban. Since then, topics related to the program have often appeared on social media trending lists.

Roast has been no stranger to public attention over the last five years and though the exact reasons for the postponed episode this year may never be known, the sudden delay has fueled ongoing controversies over the show, sparking debate about how to best develop comedy programs in China.

The episode that caused the furor may well have been the most popular of all 47 since Roast's debut, with the hashtag “best-ever Roast” winning over 200 million views on Weibo after it aired. Many were particularly impressed by former professional soccer player Fan Zhiyi’s roasts of the basketball stars.

Fan took aim at Zhou for a misplaced pass in the last seven seconds of a match at the 2019 Basketball World Cup which cost the Chinese basketball team their place at the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games: “I can pass the ball [successfully] to others [with my feet]; you can’t even do it using your hands!” Fan quipped. Guo's performance in scoring just one point in a match against Venezuela during that same tournament also became the butt of Fan's jokes: “It’s not easy to get only one point in a basketball game.”

Many lauded those barbs, but Fan also touched some nerves. Wang Shipeng, a basketball player-turned commentator, denounced the show for “adding salt to our wounds,” and (to the delight of basketball fans) questioned how Fan was qualified to judge basketball players when he and the national soccer team had only managed to qualify for the World Cup once, in 2002. The Chinese Football Association responded with a Weibo post of a rule from their disciplinary code, warning that players or officials who provoke hostility via media would be fined over 300,000 RMB or even suspended from matches for 18 months.