News

Hot takes: 'Last Week Tonight With John Oliver' returns for a seventh searing season

« Back to News

 
Author: 
Sarah Passingham / TV Media
John Oliver hosts "Last Week Tonight With John Oliver"

John Oliver hosts "Last Week Tonight With John Oliver"

Sometimes life's darkest realities require searing, comedic criticism, and no one challenges the world's issues quite like John Oliver. Back for a seventh season, a new episode of "Last Week Tonight With John Oliver" premieres Sunday, Feb. 16, on HBO. The British comedian has been tackling fraught issues weekly since 2014 on "Last Week Tonight," providing some much-needed media literacy and a bit of comedy to a news landscape rife with misinformation.

Oliver packs thorough breakdowns of the world's most complex issues into each episode of "Last Week Tonight," from Flint's water crisis and Brexit to opioids and gerrymandering. "Last Week Tonight" has been a mainstay of HBO's Sunday night programming since 2014, so the show has been there to cover every step of President Trump's road to and through the White House, and will presumably address impeachment hearings when it returns this week.

In February 2016, "Last Week Tonight" aired a segment that mocked Donald Trump for his family's abandonment of their ancestral name, Drumpf. The clip of that segment spread like wildfire online, racking up tens of millions of views, clearly hitting a chord with audiences. Other viral moments include the show buying up and then forgiving almost $15 million worth of medical debt in Texas, and the creation of a legally recognized church called Our Lady of Perpetual Exemption.

Finding a unique angle from which to examine the issue of the day is what "Last Week Tonight" does best. That work is done around the clock by writers who research even during the show's off-season. When asked by Vulture in February 2019 about how the show operates behind the scenes while it's not airing, Oliver said, "We've been in the office the whole time, since the day after our last show, just researching. And that's kind of vital time for us to set ourselves up for the year." Knowing that, I think we can expect a fresh perspective on the impeachment that the nightly news cannot provide upon the return of "Last Week Tonight."

Looking back at the show's early episodes, Oliver referenced his second-ever episode in an interview with Vulture, noting that spending 12 minutes solely on the death penalty in 2014 felt "genuinely reckless. Who wants to watch 12 minutes of comedy about the death penalty?" Oliver went on to say, "Then, when you realize people might want more than that, all of sudden we could start to do 20-, 25-, 30-minute, sometimes more than 30-minute stories, just because it feels like either you've gained people's trust enough or that you feel like it's possible that people will be willing to watch it." In the third season's finale, Oliver dedicated a full 30-minute episode, "President-Elect Trump," to considering the impact of voting in Donald Trump as president of the United States. The episode aired just five days after the polls closed.

John Oliver in "Last Week Tonight With John Oliver"

John Oliver in "Last Week Tonight With John Oliver"

Oliver's appeal is at least partly due to his incredibly thorough and fact-supported arguments. He needles every angle of the subjects he tackles in episodes of "Last Week Tonight," no matter how much time is dedicated to it. He's similarly thorough about other endeavors, too. In 2017, he was asked to moderate a Tribeca Film Festival screening of 1997's "Wag the Dog," a film about a man tasked with spinning false news stories to distract from the president's sex scandal, starring Dustin Hoffman and Robert De Niro. During the panel, Oliver questioned Hoffman about the multiple allegations of sexual harassment levied against him and, not satisfied with the actor's initial denial and deflection, corrected Hoffman on his own statement.

Hoffman was unsettled, and had clearly been expecting a lighter, celebrity-friendly chat about the film. Speaking with the Guardian following the incident, Oliver said, "It's a 'Wag The Dog' screening, a film in which sexual harassment is buried in a gigantic power imbalance. The fact that he would turn up and think I wouldn't bring it up made me see how little he'd thought about it."

Though he has made his career as someone who is not flustered by celebrity or the cult of personality, Oliver is not immune to becoming star-struck by the one mega star that would stop anyone in their tracks. He lent his voice to 2019's "The Lion King" as Zazu, the bird who serves to provide updates on the pride lands to King Mufasa. While the voice cast recorded separately, they all came together to shoot a promotional cast photo ahead of the film's release -- that is, nearly all of the cast. Oliver confirmed speculation that Beyoncé, who voices Nala in the film, was not present for the shot, but he told Stephen Colbert that "the future presence of Beyoncé was so intimidating" that he jumped like he'd experienced "an electrical reaction" when he was told she'd be added to the photo next to him.

Do not miss what will certainly be some well-researched, informative and funny takes on world issues when "Last Week Tonight" returns with its seventh season premiere on Sunday, Feb. 16, on HBO.