John Oliver takes swipe at House of the Dragon on HBO’s own Last Week Tonight

Oliver has never shied away from cracking jokes about his host network

John Oliver took a couple of swipes at HBO in the latest episode of Last Week Tonight.

The talk show host made two jokes at the expense of his own network during Sunday night’s (16 October) instalment.

The main segment of the episode saw Oliver speaking about transgender rights, during which he showed a video of an interview with a young trans girl expressing frustration that she couldn’t use the girls’ bathroom at school, which had security standing guard outside.

“This is brutal,” Oliver said of the video. “It’s so dark it is genuinely hard to watch – which would also, coincidentally, be a pretty accurate tagline for House of the Dragon.”

Earlier this month, viewers complained that one episode of the Game of Thrones spin-off series was “too dark”.

Many viewers claimed that the lighting was so dim they were struggling to make out the action on screen.

HBO have since responded to the complaints, stating that the “dimmed lighting” was “an intentional creative decision”.

Elsewhere in the segment, while speaking about gender-affirming care, Oliver took the opportunity to have another crack at HBO.

“To hear some tell it, as soon as a child declares themselves trans, there is an immediate, irreversible surgical decision undertaken, and there just isn’t,” he said.

Explaining what gender-affirming care means, Oliver said that for many people it would mean more of a social transition – such as getting a new haircut or calling them by a new name – “because prepubescent children are not eligible for medical interventions”.

(HBO)

Noting that some families may consider puberty blockers, Oliver highlighted that if such treatment were to be stopped, puberty would resume.

He urged viewers to “think of it like a pause button – that thing you can’t do easily on the HBO Max app”, Oliver joked.

Users of the HBO Max app have complained that it is unnecessarily difficult to pause a series.

House of the Dragon aired its most recent episode on Sunday (16 October), with many viewers opining that it was a “confusing” instalment.