Bill Maher’s reign of ehhhh to continue for 2 more seasons at HBO

Great news for anyone worried that their Friday night TV viewing wouldn’t be sufficiently irritating in the near future: HBO has announced that it’s going ahead and renewing Real Time With Bill Maher for another two seasons. (Thus also freeing us of any 2025 and 2026 anxieties about not getting a sufficient weekly dose of Maher’s apparently unquenchable urge to smirk.)

As noted in the press release for the renewal, the two-season order will bring Real Time up to 24 seasons on the airwaves, dating back its genesis shortly after Maher got kicked off ABC for comments he made on his TV show Politically Incorrect way back in the wake of the 9/11 attacks. And while we’re not privy to the business machinations over at the Warner Bros.-owned network, it’s not hard to understand the economics of the renewal: Powered, as it is, largely by a combination of savvy booking, strong marketing, and Maher’s inexhaustible belief in his own correctness, Real Time is an easy, presumably cheap engine for weekly bolts of interest from people who love and hate the man alike. As long as Maher doesn’t literally say a slur (again), his knack for controversy can keep the series running for as long as anyone would like, which is exactly why it’s been a staple of HBO’s late night programming for so long.

For his part, Maher responded to the renewal by making the rare statement we can find no genuine fault with, noting that “Two more years in the dream job of a lifetime, on the network so many dream of being on – I think that’s what we call a no-brainer.” Real Time typically runs throughout the year, airing roughly 35 episodes per season (although last year’s strikes cut that number by about a third).