First on LateNighter: UK viewers tuning in Monday night hoping to catch this week’s Last Week Tonight with John Oliver are in for a disappointment: The episode will not air after it was pulled from Sky One’s schedule at the eleventh hour.
Sky reps have not yet responded to LateNighter’s request for comment, but the episode’s absence from its usual UK linear slot appears to be connected to John Oliver’s main story this week on the Makerfield by-election—an active parliamentary contest with potentially major implications for Prime Minister Keir Starmer and the Labour Party.
The segment aired in full Sunday night on HBO in the U.S., but its UK broadcast was likely complicated by Britain’s strict impartiality rules during election periods. Those rules have previously affected how Last Week Tonight episodes dealing with UK elections and referendums have aired in Oliver’s native country.
In 2024, Sky declined to air an episode of Last Week Tonight in its linear slot after Oliver devoted the bulk of the show to the UK general election and the Conservative Party’s struggles.
Oliver ran into a similar issue in 2016, when Sky pulled an episode devoted to Brexit shortly before polls closed in the EU referendum, citing legal restrictions around election coverage.
In this case, Oliver focused on the race in Makerfield, where Greater Manchester mayor Andy Burnham is running for Parliament amid mounting pressure on Prime Minister Keir Starmer and the Labour Party. A Burnham win could set up a leadership challenge against Starmer; a loss, Oliver argued, could further embolden Nigel Farage’s Reform UK.
It wasn’t immediately clear whether the episode will air on Sky One later, or made available on-demand, where Ofcom impartiality rules are less strict.
Election-related material isn’t the only Last Week Tonight content that has proven sensitive in the UK. In 2022, Sky cut portions of an episode in which Oliver joked about Queen Elizabeth II following her death—a decision Oliver later criticized publicly. And just last month, a brief sequence involving King Charles and digital IDs was missing from the UK version of the show.
Watch Oliver’s full segment on the Makerfield by-election below:
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