‘SNL UK’ has quickly become must-watch TV
In March, I wrote a piece about the debut episode of Saturday Night Live UK, noting that it more than succeeded at being funny but showed signs of being too American (’45 Seconds with Fouracres’ aside, of course).
Six episodes in, however, it’s clear that the show is not only British enough but also one of the best comedies on TV. It’s already better than the American version has been in a long time, and although it hasn’t yet caught on as a collective national viewing experience, it absolutely deserves to.
Whoever was in charge of casting the show is the first hero of this enterprise. Sketch comedy requires performers who can transform multiple times in the space of an hour, often swapping gender, jumping multiple decades in age, and juggling multiple accents.
A background in confessional stand-up comedy probably isn’t the best indicator of promise. The SNL UK cast is packed with versatility. There are some, like Jack Shep, who got their start on TikTok, but most of the cast have a background in theatre.
George Fouracres, for example, has appeared in multiple productions at Shakespeare’s Globe, including the lead role in Hamlet. Hammed Animashaun was nominated for an Olivier Award, and Annabel Marlow trained at both LAMDA and The Royal Central School of Speech and Drama. Nearly everyone in the cast has put in the back-breaking work at the Edinburgh Fringe, including Ayoade Bamgboye, who won the award for ‘Best Newcomer’ there last year. In other words, no one should be surprised that, when an SNL UK sketch turns into a musical number, everyone turns out to be a Broadway-level singer.
All of this versatility has meant that the content of the show is limitless. Where the American version tends to recycle premises and trot out famous cameos to distract from the general stagnation, SNL UK swings from musical theatre to Gothic literature symposiums to rugby fandom to Enid Blyton to board games. And that doesn’t even include the usual fodder of game shows, nature documentaries, and politics.
There have also been plenty of deep dives into the particularities of British and Irishness, including the behaviour of Brits on holiday, a breakdown of the various types of Irish grandads (an instant Fouracres classic), and superstitions over child mascots in football.
The writing is just as important as the performances, of course, and it’s proven to be particularly sharp in the Weekend Update segment hosted by Ania Magliano and Paddy Young. The American version has long since descended into apologetic, cringeworthy line deliveries of dad jokes, but the UK version comes in hot every week.
Between jokes about the Saudi Crown Prince’s (alleged) dismemberment of journalists, Andrew Windsor’s future death, and Michael Jackson’s (alleged) preference for pre-pubescent boys, they cross the line multiple times every week in glorious fashion. In fact, all the mediocre male comedians who have been melting down about wokeness over the past few years should watch Weekend Update and observe how nothing is off limits as long as the punchline is actually funny.
Another area where the show excels is the depth of its sketches. Instead of hanging on a single concept, they take you on a journey. Consider, for example, the DadSwap bit, which began as a goofy ad for an app that allows adult kids to find fathers whose interests are more aligned with their own and turned into a confession from the app’s founder (Fouracres again) that his ingenious idea ended up being an incest-inflected dating platform. An ad for a handbag organiser went similarly off the rails to a spectacular degree.
The thread that holds all of these elements together and makes SNL UK shine brighter than anyone could have predicted is the sheer level of commitment from everyone involved. It’s somewhere near 110% every single week. Even when bits don’t land, the performers are so dedicated to seeing them through that it becomes a joke unto itself. The Easter bunny birthing class sketch, for example, was weirder than it was funny, but when it could have fizzled, it just kept building, until its utter absurdity became downright impressive. A Weekend Update bit about a father and his adult son still engaging in skin-to-skin contact had a similar relentlessness about it.
This is exactly why the show needs to be appointment viewing for anyone who enjoys laughing. It’s so rare to see such a high calibre of live entertainment on television or in person. Watching the cast handle the mind-boggling number of sketches each week, including the ones that don’t quite land, rivals watching even the most carefully crafted, high-production-value scripted series. Unfortunately, it hasn’t seemed to have gained enough traction yet.
Shortly before the fifth episode aired, Deadline reported that the social media views for SNL UK had passed 86million, but the audience numbers for each episode had fallen by a third since its March premiere. It’s encouraging that the show is gaining recognition online, but it’s a crime that the audience numbers are so low. Part of the joy of the show is seeing each episode in its entirety, messiness included. If you’re only watching the highlight reel, you’re missing some of the most valiant, no-holds-barred moments. In an over-polished, over-edited media landscape, watching professionals save a performance through sheer skill and lack of vanity is downright emotional.
It’s impossible to fully appreciate a peak in popular culture as it’s happening, but I’m pretty confident that we’ll look back on this inaugural season of SNL UK as a comedy high point. You can either wait to fall in love with it when it qualifies as nostalgia in 20 years, or cut out all the waiting and just enjoy it now.
