The first few weeks of Last Week Tonight, it was pretty much The Daily Show on HBO. Which was fine; it was funny and smart and you can never get too much of that.
But then the show began to find itself, dropping the interviews and devoting itself primarily to long pieces that are funny and insightful and often represent the best commentary on a particular subject, like their take on Ferguson and the militarization of the police, which was brilliant both as comedy and as advocacy.
I'm not sure how much good the advocacy does - the audience for this show probably goes in agreeing with Oliver - but it's nice to see something both so smart and so entertaining.