#JOHN OLIVER THE DAILY SHOW SERIES#

Where Stewart views the idiocies of the daily news with an eternal wince, Oliver’s tone is a bit more sharp and flabbergasted.Īnd while Oliver had the gift of a big ongoing story, the NSA surveillance revelations, to fill his first week, he clearly came prepared with self-deprecating material. By and large, he’s delivering jokes and asides that you could easily imagine coming from Stewart-in a segment on whistleblowers, he declared, “If you are a whistle, this is the week you are getting blown”-though, if you listen closely, there are some different shadings beyond the accent. Now that Oliver’s in the anchor chair, he’s had to transition from the voice of irrationality to the voice of reason. Though Oliver hasn’t cultivated a fictional persona to the extent that, say, Stephen Colbert did, his job has often been to be a devil’s advocate foil to Jon Stewart, arguing an exaggerated version of journalistic obtuseness to the genially exasperated anchor. There is a little dissonance in Oliver’s transition from field correspondent to anchor. (Which, OK, it was a bit weird to hear a British host cracking on Tim Tebow’s ability to throw what you Yanks call a “football.”) “Let’s all acknowledge for a moment that this is weird,” he quipped at the beginning of his first show Monday, but by and large his Daily Show is designed to keep the weirdness to a minimum-and that, focused mainly on Oliver’s British background and accent.

John Oliver debuted as interim summer anchor this week, and after three shows, it looks like Oliver’s job is mainly to keep the ship on course, or the lorry in the left-hand lane, or what have you.

#JOHN OLIVER THE DAILY SHOW SERIES#

And this summer, when Jon Stewart temporarily left The Daily Show to direct a movie, the series decided to go in a radical direction: using a host who spells “John” with an “h.” Follow is often a time of experimentation for TV networks.

John oliver the daily show