British comedian John Oliver took over The Daily Show last night, sitting in for Jon Stewart, who is taking the summer off to make a movie. Oliver quickly introduced himself and reminded the audience why he’s there before jumping headfirst into the biggest story of the past week.
“Welcome to The Daily Show,” he told viewers at the start. “I am John Oliver and let’s all just acknowledge for a moment that this is weird.” He noted that Stewart told him that no big news stories break over the summer and then this happened. The NSA surveillance programs were made public, so that took up the majority of the time on his first episode. That meant that we were deprived of a several British jokes.
After the first commercial break, Oliver hoped to get some analysis from the other members of the news team, but they were too jealous of his new job as host to offer anything substantive.
The special guest on the night was This Is The End actor/writer/director Seth Rogen. The interview was very much like the interviews Stewart does with celebrities, but Oliver seemed a little bit too excited to tell him how much he liked This Is The End. There was a really funny segment where Oliver tried to get Rogen to comment on the NSA scandal and they showed Rogen in his dressing room complaining about Oliver hosting instead of Stewart.
Stewart is in the Middle East to film Rosewater, a movie about a journalist who was imprisoned by Iran. He’ll be back on the show in September.
image: Comedy Central