If you only hadn’t thrown our tea into the harbor.
John Oliver’s Terrifying Times stand-up set premieres on April 20th on Comedy Central, which is remarkable. It’s the first time a Daily Show correspondent has done a comedy special while still on the show as far as I can call, a reversal of what they did with Demetri Martin. Oliver is also one of the most versatile comedians: In addition to all this, he along with the wonderful Andy Zaltzmann does the radio with The Bugle, a consistently funny podcast and truly a pleasure to hear. I’m working through the archives and “Hotties from History” along with the reaction from their audience is just comedy gold. I wish I had caught their Political Animal radio show. Kudos to whoever casted Oliver onto The Daily Show. He along with John Hodgman brought the show back after Colbert and Carrell became less frequent and finally left. They really brought back the tradition where correspondent sketches could literally go anywhere, Hodgman with his quiet, insane madness (“John, is that really true? / Yes. I said it, didn’t I?”) and Oliver with his zany eye for satire (the 3-minute list of silly names for British military figures, “The Meter is Running”).