John Oliver Winning Streak Finished: His Show’s Pulled from Award Consideration
John Oliver and his show “Last Week Tonight” will not contend for a Critics Choice Award this year, ending their four-year winning streak. This decision stems from new rules implemented by the Critics Choice Association, wich now specifies that a “talk show” must involve conversation, a standard that Oliver’s predominantly monologue-style show does not meet. Consequently, the show was reclassified as a comedy, placing it in a more competitive category against scripted shows. Faced with these changes, the team behind “Last Week Tonight” decided to withdraw from the awards altogether. This progress coincides with a challenging month for Oliver, notably after the recent political events surrounding Donald Trump’s re-election, which he openly criticized during his show.
There’s going to be a new champion of talk shows when it comes to the Critics Choice Awards.
And that’s because British comedian and HBO parody-news pundit John Oliver and his show, “Last Week Tonight,” won’t be winning the title this year — bringing an end to four straight wins in the category.
Perhaps most agonizingly for Oliver and his staff, the streak appears to be based on a small technicality.
The Critics Choice Awards, run by the Critics Choice Association, recently underwent some rule changes for its nominations that directly affected Oliver and “Last Week Tonight.”
As The Hollywood Reporter pointed out, the CCA recently updated its award verbiage so that a “talk show” must “involve conversation.”
Oliver’s show generally features the eponymous host monologuing through most of the show before finishing with some sort of bit that may or may not involve a conversation.
The long-running format clearly didn’t meet the CCA’s new standards, so the organization rebranded Oliver’s show as a comedy.
That means the show would’ve had to compete with scripted comedy shows — which has a much deeper and competitive pool of candidates than talk shows, including another HBO show.
Faced with those prospects, the decision-makers at “Last Week Tonight” chose to pull out of the award show altogether, per the Reporter.
As Oliver’s dominance atop the Critics Choice Awards comes to an end, it caps off a rough month for the British funnyman.
Oliver, who has never hidden his leftist ideology nor his disdain for conservatism, started off November with President-elect Donald Trump’s big victory over failed presidential candidate Kamala Harris.
Of note, neither Oliver nor Trump are fans of each other.
Oliver reinforced that fact with his first show after the Nov. 5 election:
WARNING: The following video contains vulgar language that some viewers may find offensive.
“Yeah, it is crazy [Trump won re-election],” a bewildered Oliver said.
He added: “It’s really f***ing crazy.”
Coincidentally, if you actually viewed that video in its entirety, you would’ve noticed that Oliver does not, in fact, engage in a single conversation.
Given his show’s own murky category issues and the fact that Trump will be inaugurated on Jan. 20, it appears the British funnyman doesn’t have a whole lot to laugh about these days.
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