Is Last Week Tonight with John Oliver new tonight on HBO, 8/20?
After all, let’s frame it in the following terms: It has basically been four months now since the last episode of the late-night show aired, and this is a longer hiatus than we even get from the series between seasons. It is one of the longer breaks we’ve ever had across the entirety of the show’s run, and it has been a late-night fixture for a pretty long period of time now.
Unfortunately, there is still no direct evidence that this is changing anytime soon. There is no new episode of Last Week Tonight on the air this week. The WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes remain ongoing and while we know that the writers’ guild is in talks with the streaming services and studios, that doesn’t mean that a deal is imminent. Are we more hopeful than we were earlier in the summer? Sure, but the powers-that-be are going to need to make some concessions. The writers deserve a better, more lucrative future in an era where there are fewer episodes per season, and it can often be harder to attain anything close to full-time work.
Now, we do at least know that once these strikes are over, Last Week Tonight with John Oliver is one of those shows that could come back fairly soon after the strikes are over, and we know that there are so many different things that the show could cover! There is of course everything with the strikes, but in terms of politics alone there has been a near-constant stream of news.
Of course, the ironically is that this show doesn’t look backwards a lot of the time. With that, it wouldn’t be a shock if this show comes back and the very first line is Oliver asking the audience if there is anything they missed while they were away.
What do you want to see on Last Week Tonight with John Oliver when the series does eventually return?
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(Photo: HBO.)