Produced by Universal Television and Sethmaker Shoemeyers Productions and starring Amber Ruffin, it features a mix of sketches and monologues.

Peacock ordered an additional 10 episodes in December 2020, and the series was promoted with a brief run on the NBC broadcast network in February and March 2021.

[15] Patrick Rowland, Nnamdi Ngwe, Corin Wells, Ashley Nicole Black, Ian Morgan, Mike Poole, Zackery Stephens, Erica Buddington, Jill Twiss, and Michael Harriot joined the writing staff in 2021.

[17][18] On February 19, 2021, NBC announced that The Amber Ruffin Show would air on the NBC broadcast network at 1:30 a.m. ET/PT for two consecutive Friday nights (early Saturday mornings), February 26 and March 5, replacing A Little Late with Lilly Singh (which typically aired reruns on Friday nights) in its timeslot.

[20] Garrett Martin of Paste wrote in a review, "if you’ve seen her on Late Night with Seth Meyers, you know how charming and disarming Ruffin can be...For a first episode, last Friday’s debut was remarkably confident and consistent, which is a great sign for the show’s future.

"[21] Of Ruffin's persona as a host Melanie McFarland wrote for Salon, "In attempting to describe her specific appeal, one struggles to write around terms that are typically disempowering to women like "adorable" or "spunky" or any other descriptor that would rightly merit a slap in the face.

"[22] Kathryn VanArendonk of Vulture described the show warmly, writing, "Even from the first episodes on Peacock, Ruffin’s host persona was already in place, in all its iterations: her sweet, slightly sly baseline; the heightened camp of her goofiest sketches; the pivot toward directness and exasperation in her political segments.