As does Hasan Minhaj, SNL and more...

John Oliver, Hasan Minhaj’s stand-up special, and Amazon series The Marvelous Mrs Maisel, about a pioneering female comedian of the 1950s, have all won Peabody Awards.

The accolades recognise ‘powerful, enlightening, and invigorating’ examples of public service broadcasting.

Saturday Night Live also scooped an award, with special credit given to its ‘wicked satiric portrayals of President Trump [by Alec Baldwin] and a clownish coterie of administration apparatchiks’.

And Issa Rae’s HBO comedy-drama series Insecure was also awarded a Peabody, with its citation praising its ‘fresh and authentic take’ on the everyday lives of young black people in Los Angeles.

Judges praised Oliver’s show Last Week Tonight for offering ‘something completely new in the merger of comedy and reporting’, adding: ‘ While scathing in its political critique, the show is also smart and insightful in producing long-form journalism, breaking stories that others have overlooked with precision, clarity, and hilarity.’

In giving an award to Minhaj’s Netflix special, Homecoming King, judges said he delivered ‘a deeply personal memoir — part Richard Pryor, part Spaulding Gray — that covers the struggles of the immigrant experience, encounters with stereotypes and raced expectations, and intergenerational acceptance, while using comedy to invite empathy, caring, and understanding’.

 And  The Marvelous Mrs Maisel was praised for the way it ‘reflects on the "place" of women in public spaces, Jewishness, familial relations, classed expectations, and the importance of a woman not being "ripped right out of a catalogue" that is both impressively weighty and effortlessly light’.

• Saturday Night Live has announced that Tina Fey will host the show for a sixth time, fronting the season 43 finale on May 19. The musical guest that week will be Nicki Minaj.

Published: 19 Apr 2018