Since its initial airing the Charlie Pickering helmed ‘The Weekly’ has repeatedly drawn comparisons with the American late-night talk show format in general and ‘Last Week Tonight with John Oliver’ specifically.
On this week’s episode of the latter, Oliver and his team took on the topic of privately owned/publicly funded sports stadiums and the vast wealth they jealously guard. The segment ran for 19 minutes and covered off overspending, tax subsidies, naming rights, vague implications of corruption, the trickle-down effect on local economies and batshit stadium-length fish tanks.
‘The Weekly’ team also chose to discuss sporting stadiums for 5:40 minutes in this week’s episode, but kept it to the issue of naming rights. The sentiment that branded stadiums are the fucking pits is not exclusive to John Oliver’s writing team but both videos end with a similar call to action – see: “Make them pay!”/“Stand your ground!” – and bear more than a passing resemblance.
Of course the argument can be made that the story angles are different and that an Australian spin was needed, but they’re definitely way too similar for their nearly back-to-back airing to be a coincidence. And no doubt the creators of ‘The Weekly’ were bracing themselves for comments since they had to be aware of the parallels.
[The stadium naming portion of this evening occurs at 3:23]
Posted by Last Week Tonight with John Oliver on Monday, 13 July 2015
Back in June Pickering and Co. took on sports bets and touched on Australia’s gambling industry – we as a nation are world leader’s in having a punt, with Singapore coming in second place. Elsewhere:
Granted there is always going to be overlap in current affairs coverage but otherwise one issue may be that, as we recently touched upon with Patrick Brammall, the star of new Aussie series ‘GLITCH‘, when it comes to local content the funding just isn’t there. As he pointed out: “Australia’s strength to weight ratio is through the roof. We do so well, it’s just the resources we have – I’m talking about money – is not enough.”
In the grand scheme of things is this all very important? Fuck no. But as a viewer it is disappointing to see evidence to suggest Aussie television and its makers still need to emulate American successes to find any of their own.
