Viewers hoping Hasan Minhaj would be around to provide insight and commentary on the forthcoming presidential election received some disappointing news from Minhaj himself on Tuesday. Patriot Act with Hasan Minhaj, the host’s Netflix talk show, has been canceled by the streaming platform after six seasons across two years.
“What a run,” Minhaj wrote on Twitter. “Patriot Act has come to an end. I got to work with the best writers, producers, researchers, and animators in the game. My 2 babies were born and grew up with the show. TY to @netflix and everyone who watched.”
Patriot Act debuted in October of 2018 and ran for 39 total episodes, all of which will remain available on Netflix despite the cancelation. (The final episodes debuted on Netflix in June.) Last year, Patriot Act received a Peabody Award for entertainment.
“Hasan Minhaj has created the perfect model for engaging his fellow millennials in contemporary politics and public life,” said the Peabody Awards in a statement about the show last year. “With his trademark high-octane energy, the first Indian-American and Muslim late-night host brings a welcome voice to political entertainment television.”
Among the reasons Patriot Act was lauded during its run was for the show’s innovative use of graphics and design, which the Emmy Awards singled out in 2019.
“Netflix is like electricity at this point. Or water—it’s just this constant flow of content. The medium is the message,” Minhaj told Vanity Fair in 2019. “When we first designed the set, some of the older critics would be like, ‘Isn’t there too much information happening on the screen? Shouldn’t you be at a desk with a single image over your shoulder?’ And I’m like: Do you realize how fast and how many taps we’re doing per second, just in our day-to-day lives?”
Minhaj rose to fame as a correspondent on The Daily Show and later hosted the White House Correspondents’ Dinner in 2017, just six months after Donald Trump won the presidential election. “Now, a lot of people in the media say that Donald Trump goes golfing too much. You guys are always like, ‘He goes golfing too much,’ which raises a very important question: Why do you care?” Minhaj joked at the time. “Do you want to know what he is doing when he’s golfing? Being president. Let the man putt-putt. Keep him distracted. Teach him how to play badminton. Tell him he has a great body for bobsledding. Play him tic-tac-toe. The longer you keep him distracted, the longer we are not at war with North Korea.”
He had been invited back to emcee this year’s White House Correspondents’ Dinner, but the event was delayed and later canceled because of the coronavirus pandemic.
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