Laikykites Ten

Laikykites Ten / Hold On There

Published: March 26, 2017

Laikykites Ten (Hold On There) is a Lithuanian comedic talk show that began in 2016. It’s also something of an experiment in Lithuanian television-making: it exists only on YouTube and is crowdfunded through Patreon, where it has more than 4,800 patrons. Despite its unorthodox production, it’s becoming quite popular. It airs on the YouTube channel Liberty TV (LaisvėsTV), which has the highest number of subscriptions among Lithuanian YouTube channels. The goal of the project is to create a new, independent, modern media in Lithuania.

The show is hosted by Andrius Tapinas, and is the “flagship” of the LibertyTV channel. It is called an “intelligent satire” show, on which everyday issues and more deeper, serious problems are discussed. Guests include journalists, public figures, and comedians. The show is filmed with a live audience once a month in clubs in major cities in Lithuania.

Many of the episodes of Hold On There, as well as the other shows broadcast under the LibertyTV flag, are explicitly political. Tapinas interviews major Lithuanian political figures, and there was a special election-night broadcast of the show on October 9. But the show is most famous internationally for its February 3 episode “Lithuania Welcomes Trump,” which came with the description: “As you know, from now on it will be America First. And the Netherlands wants to be second. … While Lithuania pretends to gun for the second place it is all about being the third. It‘s true. Lithuania welcomes Donald J. Trump.”

The show is also occasionally released in Russian, under the name Держитесь там (same translation).

 

The show’s official site on YouTube.

The show’s Russian-language version.

 

The most recent episode (as of this writing), from March 2017:

 

The Trump episode:

About the author

Julie Hersh

Julie studied Russian as a Second Language in Irkutsk and before that, Bishkek, with SRAS's Home and Abroad Scholarship program, with the goal of someday having some sort of Russia/Eurasia-related career. She recently got her master’s degree from the University of Glasgow and the University of Tartu, where she studied women’s dissent in Soviet Russia. She also has a bachelor’s degree in literature from Yale. Some of her favorite Russian authors are Sorokin, Shishkin, Il’f and Petrov, and Akhmatova. In her spare time Julie cautiously practices martial arts, reads feminist websites, and taste-tests instant coffee for her blog.

Program attended: Home and Abroad Scholar

View all posts by: Julie Hersh