UK television network Sky is under fire after censoring a recent UK broadcast of comedian John Oliver's HBO show Last Week Tonight with John Oliver.
The most recent broadcast of Oliver's satirical look at the news, which aired Sunday, included jokes about the death of Queen Elizabeth II.
But in the UK broadcast those jokes were cut, leading many to criticize Sky and its parent company Comcast for treating British viewers like children.
Some of the jokes used the Queen's passing to take aim at the UK's newly appointed conservative Prime Minister Liz Truss, as seen below.
The biggest joke Oliver made that referenced the Queen didn't even take aim at the Queen or her newly appointed Prime Minister, but focused instead on brands that used the event of the Queen's death to make overwrought social media tributes.
Oliver opened the show by lampooning some of these tributes, saying:
"...[T]he UK ... is clearly still reeling from the shocking death of a 96-year-old woman from natural causes."
"It is a big moment [of] the week, and for some reason, absolutely everyone felt they had to weigh in on."
Oliver then mocked brands like Swedish animated character Crazy Frog and the UK division of Domino's Pizza for their strange tributes to the Queen. He quipped:
"...[I]f the world is mourning, they should maybe tell the U.S. Domino’s account, whose most recent tweet as of this taping is ‘if ur reading this it means u need pizza, like to confirm.' Get your fu*king house in order Domino’s! A lady is dead!"
From there, Oliver went on to mock Truss.
"The queen's death is sadly not the only traumatic event that Britain has had to deal with this week. Because on Tuesday, Liz Truss — basically Margaret Thatcher if she were high on glue — became its new Prime Minister."
But according to Variety, the versions that aired on both Sky's streaming platform Now and its broadcast channel Sky Comedy removed all of Oliver's jokes about brands that referenced the Queen, cutting directly to his jab at Truss.
On Twitter, many people expressed anger at the censorship, including many who self-identified as supporters of the late Queen.
The censorship incident comes on the heels of a shocking wave of arrests of anti-monarchist protestors who have attended events related to Queen Elizabeth's death and King Charles III's accession in England and Scotland to call for the abolition of the British monarchy.
Free speech advocates have decried the arrests as anti-democratic.
