"[13] He said to another interviewer that he is concerned about dealing with old news: If something happens on a Monday, realistically all the meat is going to be picked off that bone by the time it gets to us – there's probably barely a point in doing it ...

[14]Tim Carvell, executive producer of Last Week Tonight, explained in an interview how the cast and crew deal with a half hour of Oliver speaking without any commercial breaks.

[17] The show returned on March 29, 2020, being filmed in Oliver's home with no studio audience due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and produced largely by virtual communication.

[21] Oliver has stated that he has "full creative freedom, including free rein to criticize corporations", and frequently pokes fun at HBO's (now former) parent company AT&T, referring to it as the show's "business daddy".

[citation needed] Oliver injects humor into his presentation, including satirical analogies and allusions to popular culture and celebrities.

[28][29] The show includes a panel in the upper-left corner that frequently displays a photo or graphic that accompanies the subject at hand, as a comedic aid.

The mascots used in the show include Jeff the Diseased Lung in a Cowboy Hat, Hoots the NSA Owl, Taryn the Tinder Chicken, and the Last Week Tonight puppets.

[36][37] While broadly within the categories of political satire and late-night talk shows, Last Week Tonight has taken a more specific approach to deeper dives into systemic issues which intend to illustrate both the wider socio-political context and the complex interconnections and embeddedness of public policies in social outcomes.

[47] Prior to Season 11, the main segment from each episode was posted on Monday, the day following the original Sunday airings on HBO.

The number of viewers online, through websites such as YouTube showing extended clips of different segments, have steadily climbed into multiple millions.

The first episode of his HBO series didn't stray far from the [Jon] Stewart mothership, stylistically ..." However, the reviewer, Darren Franich, liked that Oliver has "a half-hour of television that is simultaneously tighter and more ambitious, that the extra production time leads to sharper gags but also the ability to present more context" and thought that the debut had "plenty of funny throwaway lines."

Franich concluded that Last Week Tonight "suggested the sharpest possible version of its inspiration" and that it "should feel like an experiment" but "felt almost fully formed.

According to a document obtained by Vice, the military government of Thailand listed Oliver as "undermining the royal institution" for calling Crown Prince Vajiralongkorn a "buffoon" and an "idiot.

[77] Both "John Oliver" and "Last Week Tonight" were blocked from Chinese social media platform Sina Weibo immediately following the segment.

Several media outlets, noticing this pattern, suggested that attention from the show had instigated these changes, going so far as to dub the phenomenon the "John Oliver Effect".

Oliver and his team promoted the cartoon character by sending shirts with Jeff's image to Togo and displaying billboards in Uruguay, and by encouraging use of the hashtag #JeffWeCan, which trended on Twitter following the broadcast.

The segment received widespread media coverage, with several outlets praising Oliver's ability to launch successful marketing campaigns and change perceptions about smoking through the creation of the mascot.

[92] In August 2015, Oliver hired a professional tax lawyer for his "Televangelists" segment to set up a church called Our Lady of Perpetual Exemption as a legal entity.

He did this partly as a way to demonstrate how "disturbingly easy" it is, in terms of paperwork, to set up a tax-exempt religious organization as viewed by the Internal Revenue Service.

[94] Oliver's "megachurch" had a toll-free phone number which allowed callers to donate to the church, and said that any money collected would be redistributed to the charitable relief organization Doctors Without Borders.

[97] Matt Wilstein, writing for Mediaite, saw Oliver's stunt as being along the same lines as comedian Stephen Colbert's setting up of a 501(c)(4) organization – Colbert Super PAC – as a way to "test the absurd limits of the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision"; Oliver's megachurch, in contrast, is a way to test whether the IRS might view his "megachurch" as a tax-exempt organization.

[98] Leonardo Blair, writing for Christian Post, described Oliver's segment as a "brutal takedown" of televangelists and churches which preach "the prosperity gospel," a message that dupes people into thinking that cash donations will solve medical or financial problems, while in fact the donations go to the personal aggrandizement of televangelists who buy expensive jets or large mansions.

[99] A week later, on the following episode, Oliver devoted a short segment to the donations the church had received, which included money from around the world.

[105] Writing for Slate, Jordan Weissmann disputed the $15 million figure: "[Oliver] says CARP paid around $60,000 ... for its paper, which was 'out-of-statute' – meaning the debts were so old that creditors technically couldn't even sue over them anymore.

[112] The segment ended with a five-minute, Times Square-set musical number featuring crude and ludicrous fictional anecdotes about Murray.

[115][116] Russell Crowe's jockstrap was purchased by the Last Week Tonight with John Oliver staff and then donated to a Blockbuster Video shop.

[118][119] Guinness called Oliver's allegations "false and unfair", claiming that they did not send an adjudicator because they felt the cake was specifically for the purpose of mocking a record holder, stating it was their policy "not to partake in any activities which may belittle their achievements or subject them to ridicule".

[120] John Oliver extensively satirized Indian prime minister Narendra Modi in a segment which was broadcast on February 23, 2020, calling him a "temporary symbol of hate.

Amidst allegations that justices of the Supreme Court of the United States, including Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, received gifts, meals, and vacations from right-wing billionaires, including Harlan Crow, and failed to disclose them, Oliver ran a segment on his show on the Supreme Court and the scandal.

"[133][134] Other legal experts opined that it would be unlikely Oliver would be prosecuted for bribery because the offer was not made "corruptly" nor attempted to influence an "official act".