When Is John Oliver And ‘Last Week Tonight’ Coming Back To HBO? Comedian To End Three-Month Hiatus Soon

February 3 marked the 11th Sunday in a row without a new episode of the hit HBO political satire show Last Week Tonight starring comedian John Oliver. But the wait for fans of the show will not last much longer. The 41-year-old, British-born comic returns to HBO with the first installment of a new, 30-episode season on Sunday, February 17, at 11 p.m. Eastern Standard Time, according to an announcement posted on the HBO official site.

The most recent episode, in which Oliver focused on the alarming rise of authoritarian leaders in countries around the world, aired on November 17, and may still be viewed in its entirety on YouTube.

Last Week Tonight is not the only project on Oliver’s agenda, however. He recently voiced one of the lead characters in the upcoming Pixar animated film Wonder Park, which, according to Deadline.com, will hit screens on March 15 and also stars the voices of Jennifer Garner, Matthew Broderick, Mila Kunis, Kenan Thompson, and Ken Jeong.

Oliver’s HBO show, of course, focuses on satirizing the news of the previous week, and in the nearly three months since the final Season 5 episode aired, the United States alone has seen a seemingly relentless stream of news events, including the 35-day government shutdown, and as Inquisitr reported, the dramatic arrest of Roger Stone, a longtime friend and adviser to Donald Trump, on charges brought by Russia investigation special counsel Robert Mueller.

But in a recent interview with the site Indiewire, Oliver said that he does not regret missing the chance to take his comedic knife to those stories, but there was one story he regretted being forced to skip.

“There was a British family of tourists terrorizing New Zealand, and [executive producer] Tim Carvell and I were emailing back and forth, going, ‘actually, I wish we were back at work,'” Oliver said. “But all the other stuff that wasn’t that? No, we were more than happy. We had a couple of weeks off over the holidays, but otherwise, we’ve been working the whole time, researching stories, so there’s been nothing in particular that really felt painful that we weren’t on TV for, other than the barbaric British family in New Zealand.”

And while Trump will likely be a regular target of Oliver’s satire in the upcoming season, he said that he has maintained a policy of limiting his Trump references on the show, allowing him to take his trademark deep dives into a wide variety of world events and subjects.

“I was quite anxious that we protect the main body of our show from being cannibalized by him. So, I think we were able to do that,” Oliver told the New York Times last year. “We tried to contain talking about whatever he had done that week — to the extent that we could — to the first section of the show, leaving the majority of the show for those long pieces that have nothing to do with him. Still, it’s hard to ignore the president, right?”