Critical Reception
Onion News Network has received generally positive reviews from television critics. Michael Deacon of The Daily Telegraph described it as one "glorious blizzard of absurdity and bathos", while Jack Seale from Radio Times called it a "densely packed, highly intelligent comedy you’ll want to watch for a second or third time". Neil Genzlinger of The New York Times wrote that Onion News Networks makes other satirical news programmes "sluggish by comparison", before going on to say: "If the longstanding SNL segment is a sort of introductory course in wringing humor from headlines, and Mr. Stewart's 'Daily Show' is the advance-level class, 'Onion News Network' is graduate school, requiring much quicker thinking and a greater tolerance for comfort-zone invasion.
Zoe Williams of The Guardian gave a mixed review of the first episode, stating that, "even by the opening credits I was smiling so much I had a sore face". However, she was critical of the programme content. "Persistently, where the programme could rip into one thing, it instead chooses something more peripheral, more candyflossy," Williams wrote. Williams criticised a sketch relating to racism in the US judicial system, saying: "This is the kind of thing Jon Stewart could say with one eyebrow or the judicious rolling back of his wheelie presenter's chair. It's true, racism in the American judicial system is certainly worth lambasting, but there just isn't the complexity in the issue to warrant a satirical news story that goes on for four minutes."
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