For nine seasons now, John Oliver has sharpened his satire and social commentary on Last Week Tonight—streaming on Neon. Tony Stamp looks at what makes the show so enduring and essential as it hits double figures.
The promo image for season ten of Last Week Tonight shows two photos of its host John Oliver side by side. On the left, as he was when the show started: floppy fringe, sucking the arm of his glasses in parody of a certain type of news host. And on the right, as he is now: ten years older, much grayer, looking comically defeated. The fringe is gone, the hair is rumpled, the tie is loose.
It’s typically self-deprecating, a nice way of illustrating the nine years that have passed since the series pilot. But it’s also saying ‘look at the toll this has taken’. There’s the suggestion he’s fighting an uphill battle. Or maybe that, covering the woes of the world is increasingly hard because… shit just keeps getting worse?
The Daily Show (specifically the version that Jon Stewart spearheaded when he took over from Craig Kilborn in 1998), has cast a particularly large shadow over the entertainment industry. Some of its contributors, like Steve Carrell, Rob Corddry, and Ed Helms, have gone on to become famous comedic actors, while others, including Hasan Minhaj, Samantha Bee, Stephen Colbert, and Larry Wilmore, parlayed their roles into host gigs on similar shows.
In fact the format took on a life of its own, forcing late night hosts to cover politics, and birthing an entire genre of left-leaning media where formally dressed people dissect the issues of the day comedically, from White Man Behind a Desk to Some More News.
Oliver’s Last Week Tonight is kind of a blockbuster version of this, sinking its HBO budget into elaborate stunts, like buying and forgiving $15 million US in debt in 2016, or building the world’s largest marble cake in 2019. That second one was done to spite Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedow, the authoritarian president of Turkmenistan, who has a fondness for marble, horses (the cake depicted him falling off one), and Guinness World Records. That organisation declined to validate Oliver’s record-breaking baking, but has worked with Berdimuhamedow in the past.
The ability to have a go at presidents, Guinness, or anyone else the show feels deserves it is a massive asset, and Oliver knows it—he’s spoken about the protection HBO offers, both with legal bills, and its lack of advertisers. When you’re not selling ads you’re only beholden to the people paying a subscription fee.
The show also has frequent celebrity guests—George Clooney, Cardi B and Jennifer Coolidge popped into one episode in 2021. But Last Week Tonight’s biggest assets are its researchers and writing team. Oliver has always maintained that it’s a comedy show, and there are constant jokes, to be sure. There’s also comprehensive coverage of whatever topic becomes his and his team’s weekly focus.
Mercifully this often extends outside America: last season delved into the 2020 Brazilian general election, the UK monarchy’s role in British colonialism, carbon offsets, and the Taliban’s treatment of women, alongside more US-centric things like transgender rights in the US, crime reporting in the US, and mental health care in the US.
These are all thorough dissections of nuanced issues, and it must be said, explored in more depth than many straight news shows can manage. There’s the sense this acts as a corrective to the type of rhetoric that’s common on Fox News (scaremongering against immigrants, public safety precautions and so on), not just in its conclusions but its thoughtful analysis, years away from that network’s ‘thing = bad’ approach.
In 2014, Oliver tackled income inequality in America, systematically illustrating why “the American dream” is an impossibility for almost all of the nation’s population. It still stands as a particularly brave bit of broadcasting in a country with its rose-tinted glasses permanently on.
On paper none of this reads as particularly cheerful, but that’s where the jokes come in. Being on HBO is beneficial here too, allowing room for plenty of ribald language, as is Oliver’s birthplace, his accent adding a natural comedic buoyancy to some of the naughtier gags. His status as an outsider (despite being a US citizen) works in several ways: he can critique America with a slightly firmer hand, and with a basis of comparison, plus he has lived experience in the outside world. The tone of common-sense correction to structural woes just goes down a little smoother in that plummy lilt.
Last Week Tonight has won Best Variety Talk Show at the Emmys every year since 2016, all the more impressive given that it’s a weekly show. A lot of resources are behind it, but they’re allocated wisely behind the scenes, into things like research and fact-checking… and into attention-grabbing, wonderfully silly stunts.
Season ten’s promo is as self-deprecating as ever, contrasting praise for the show’s journalism alongside clips featuring Oliver playing the buffoon. He understands that it’s the sugar that makes the medicine go down, but as the years go on, that medicine seems increasingly necessary.
