Last Week Tonight with John Oliver

Night One felt almost fully-formed, as if Oliver has spent his Daily Show tutelage making a list of everything that works-- and everything he wanted to do just a little bit differently.

If Last Week Tonight With John Oliver can keep shedding humorous light on international affairs and other stories that fall through the cable-news cracks, this show might make it to eight weeks and beyond.

Oliver is terrific at mining humor from the most popular topics of the day, that is, the idiocy of the media and politicians. He's funny when he's knocking our intelligence. But he's best when he sticks to a barrage of short bits, enhanced with clips or photographs, as in his first week's efforts.

There were several very strong bits, but the best was Oliver's rant about the U.S. media's disinterest in the Indian elections.... At this point, my main complaint about the show is that it's not an hour.

It was with the Indian coverage that he both shone (commenting on one candidate's use of holographic appearances, he said, "That’s not just how you get elected. That’s how religions get started") and set himself apart. If Oliver can do for international news what Stewart and Colbert have done on the domestic scene, well, the already-crowded Sunday night DVR queue just took on an extra half-hour.

It was a very funny show, and while there are expected similarities with “The Daily Show,” Oliver’s personality sets the HBO show apart.

The first newscast did feel simultaneously long and breathless, maybe because there was little to vary it or break up the topic segments.... But it was a funny, confident start.

His delivery, which falls between Monty Python and Austin Powers, explodes with enjoyable little pips of indignation. [26 May 2014, p.42]

Even at a commercial-free 30 minutes, Last Week Tonight felt rushed and jam-packed with information, heightened by Oliver's tendency to get excited and/or yell. Those are all good traits (and, historically, pretty funny traits of his), but the entire concept might work better at an hour so he could at least breathe.

The first episode of Last Week Tonight (and, to be clear, it is only the first episode, with plenty of potential and room for improvement) demonstrated little in the way of innovating or improving on “The Daily Show’s” prevailing concept.

The fact that so much of the show relies on Oliver means he bears the burden of getting the tone exactly right. And right now, he's a little more angry than funny.

John Oliver, a graduate of “The Daily Show With Jon Stewart,” didn’t exactly break the mold when he rolled out his new show, Last Week Tonight, late on Sunday on HBO; he just tugged at it a bit.