NEW YORK, (Millat + APP/AFP) – In the age of Donald Trump, it
is a British comic with a mild regional accent and an acerbic wit who is the most popular satirist on American television.
John Oliver, 39, returns to screens this Sunday with a fourth season
of HBO’s award-winning “Last Week Tonight” at a time when the Trump presidency stands accused of testing the limits of freedom of expression and a free press.
Oliver, probably more than anyone else, has stepped into the shoes of
Jon Stewart, the American satirist who transformed US political comedy before retiring from “The Daily Show” in 2015 just as the Trump train got started.
It was “The Daily Show” that gave Oliver his big break, plucking him
from obscurity in England to work on the show from 2006 to 2014, when he appeared in a somber suit with rumpled British-rocker hair for reporter-style segments.
He even filled in for Stewart in 2013 while the American worked on a
film project. HBO then offered him his own show.
“Last Week Tonight” launched in 2014. Sitting behind a desk, again in
a somber suit, he has delivered verbal punches on weighty topics such
as automobile lenders, charter schools and food waste.
It turned him into a voice that counts. It stood him in good stead
for the political arrival of Trump, with one particular segment about his campaign viewed 31 million times on YouTube.
“It was quite hard last year,” Oliver told AFP in an interview in New
York.
“Normally you take something serious and then you make it silly. But
if you have something already stupid, how do you show people that that’s actually more important than it sounds? That was the problem,” he said.