‘Saturday Night Live UK’ aims to take a comedy hit across the pond. The first verdicts are in
LONDON (AP) — “Saturday Night Live” has crossed the pond with a mild splash.
A British offshoot of the 51-year-old U.S. comedy institution has debuted to generally positive reviews, defying doomsayers who doubted the show would survive the trans-Atlantic journey.
The format of the first episode of “Saturday Night Live UK” stuck closely to the U.S. original. The 75-minute show opened with a skit showing Prime Minister Keir Starmer seeking help from a Gen Z adviser about how to talk to President Donald Trump, before the proclamation: “Live from London, it’s Saturday night!”
“SNL” veteran Tina Fey was the host, taking questions during her opening monologue from celebrity audience members Michael Cera, Graham Norton and “Bridgerton” star Nicola Coughlan, who jokingly warned Fey that “British people tend to root for the failure of others.”
Certainly, many in Britain had predicted the show would fail, and reviews expressed surprise that it was — largely — pretty funny. The Telegraph newspaper called it “shockingly competent” and “occasionally hilarious.”
There was widespread praise for the cast of largely little-known comics: George Fouracres, Hammed Animashaun, Ayoade Bamgboye, Larry Dean, Celeste Dring, Ania Magliano, Annabel Marlow, Al Nash, Jack Shep, Emma Sidi and Paddy Young.
As in the original, the show featured topical comedy, offbeat sketches, fake commercials and the “Weekend Update” spoof of the news, as well as a guest musical act, the English band Wet Leg. Some of the humor was mildly edgy, including jokes about pedophiles, the Epstein files and disgraced royal Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor.
Apart from the accents, one difference from the American original was the expletives. British broadcasting rules allowed for a liberal sprinkling of F-words.
Since its debut in 1975 “SNL” has become a pop-culture institution and helped launch the careers of generations of comedians, from Bill Murray to Eddie Murphy and Gilda Radner to Kristen Wiig.
Efforts to replicate its success in other countries, such as France, Japan and Italy, have typically been short-lived, though a version of the show remains on the air in South Korea.
The U.K. offshoot, which has “SNL” creator Lorne Michaels as executive producer, airs on the relatively little-watched channel Sky One and the NOW streaming service. But social media may bring a much bigger audience for clips. Fey’s monologue had more than half a million views on YouTube by noon on Sunday.
The initial run is only eight episodes, and it remains to be seen how the cast fares without Fey’s assured guidance. Future guest hosts include Jamie Dorman and Riz Ahmed.
Nick Hilton in The Independent said the first episode’s sketches included “a handful of hits,” but also moments when it seemed like “tepid cosplay” of the U.S. original.
Charlotte Ivers in The Times of London felt that “the spark is not there yet,” but The Guardian’s Lucy Mangan praised the program’s ambition.
“It did not fail. And in the coming weeks, let’s hope, it can build toward real success,” she wrote.