After leaving “The Daily Show” half a decade ago, Jon Stewart is apparently ready to sign back on and tackle current events once again. But he won’t be doing it under the ‘TDS’ banner. In fact, he’s not even going to do it on cable TV. Instead, Stewart is making his (hopefully) triumphant return on Apple TV+.
According to THR, Stewart has signed a new, multi-year deal with Apple TV+ to lead a new current events series that will find the actor-comedian-pundit venturing back into the world of news but in a slightly different format. Unlike “The Daily Show,” his new show, which is still untitled, sounds more like “Last Week Tonight with Jon Oliver” and will focus on a single topic per hour-long episode. But regardless of the format, people are probably going to be excited to see Stewart talk the news yet again. And hell, this might be enough for people to subscribe to Apple TV+.
As mentioned, it wasn’t that long ago, 2015 to be exact, when Stewart stepped away from ‘TDS’ and went on to try other ventures, including filmmaking. His most recent project was this year’s feature, “Irresistible,” which stars his ‘TDS’ colleague, Steve Carell and took a satirical look at the political system in the US. However, that film was caught up in the whole pandemic of it all and never became the hit that many were expecting it to be.
Now, Stewart returns to what made him a household name and injects some new urgency into the Apple TV+ lineup, which is in desperate need of watercooler discussion. Even though Trevor Noah has done a valiant job replacing Stewart on “The Daily Show,” the series hasn’t had the same prestige it did with Stewart at the helm. In fact, you could argue that the aforementioned “Last Week Tonight” has become the de facto leader of the comedy news program arena.
Also part of the deal is the fact that Stewart will have a first-look deal with Apple for other projects that he’s working on. What those might be is anyone’s guess, but it does mean that there will likely be quite a bit of Stewart-led material coming to the streamer in the years to come.
