In what’s become something of a trend for Last Week Tonight with John Oliver this season, Sunday night’s episode was the longest in the show’s 12-season history—clocking in at a hefty 49 minutes.
The extra runtime was the result of a one-two punch: an extended opening segment on the fallout from anti-ICE protests in Los Angeles, and a main story that took a no-holds-barred look at America’s juvenile justice system. “Tonight we’re going to take a longer than usual look at two things,” Oliver explained. “Our juvenile justice system, and the facilities it can, far too often, funnel kids into.”
What followed was a 38-minute takedown of a system Oliver described as deeply flawed, racially discriminatory, and shockingly opaque. “Our juvenile justice system has many of the flaws of our adult one,” he noted, “except the people running it have even more power, and the damage it can do is even longer-lasting.” From judges who sentence kids to for-profit detention centers for minor infractions, to facilities that use solitary confinement on preteens, Oliver laid out a damning case for sweeping reform.
Though this week’s episode set a new record for the show, longer runtimes are nothing new for Last Week Tonight. Originally a half-hour show, a LateNighter anaysis showed that the HBO series’ average runtime has steadily grown over the years, with the show logging its most substantial gains since Season 8, increasing from 32.9 minutes to 40.9 minutes this season-to-date:
The show’s previous record was set just two months ago, on April 5, when Oliver spent 48 minutes unpacking Donald Trump’s sweeping tariff proposals and the political right’s fixation on transgender athletes. That episode now takes second place.
Last Week Tonight with John Oliver has been a critical darling, winning a total of 72 major awards from 161 nominations, including 30 Primetime Emmy Awards, 9 Writers Guild awards, 5 Emmys for picture editing, and a trio of Peabody Awards. Notably, it clinched Outstanding Variety Talk Series for seven straight years and continues to dominate in the Outstanding Scripted Variety Series category. It airs Sunday nights at 11:00pm on HBO and Max.
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