Midway through Saturrday Night Live‘s 51st season broadcasting from 30 Rock, 81-year-old creator and SNL overlord Lorne Michaels finally has decided to clone his seminal project across the pond for British audiences by British comedians. Will the formula translate? Should it remain the same formula, even? One thing’s for certain: With iconic SNL alum (and potential successor to Lorne) Tina Fey overseeing the proceedings as the debut guest host, SNL UK will look and even sound quite familiar to SNL fans. At least for the first episode.
The Gist: Before we get into anything resembling an episode recap, it’s important to stress that SNL UK premiered with almost the exact same format and blueprint as the original sketch comedy institution. We’re opening cold with current politics, cast members shouting “Live from London, it’s Saturday night!” straight into a montage introducing the cast members from the streets of London backed by a live band, into a monologue from the guest host, followed by more live and pre-taped sketches, the first song from the musical guest, Weekend Update, more sketches, the second musical performance, more sketches, saving the weirdest ones for last, and finally thank yous and good nights from the host standing with the cast and musical guest onstage.
And since it’s a big deal of an episode, plenty of surprise celebrity cameos, too. SNL UK‘s premiere brought out Nicola Coughlan (Derry Girls, Bridgerton), Graham Norton, Michael Cera all during ina Fey’s monologue, and later Bridgerton‘s Regé-Jean Page, plus a redux by Coughlan in the final sketch.
Performances Worth Watching: If the premiere episode set any individual cast member up to be the star, it was definitely designed for George Fouracres. A member of sketch group Daphne (with Netflix stand-up Phil Wang) and actor with Shakespeare’s Globe who also starred in Flo and Joan’s One Man Musical, Fouracres is both the cast’s resident impressionist and also the guy who bookended the episode from the starting cold open portraying British Prime Minister Kier Starmer to the closing “45 Seconds with Fouracres” where he hilariously sent up Irish granddads and made Coughlan amusingly uncomfortable. Why Sky TV hasn’t made the “45 Seconds” sketch or the Hamnet send-up (where both Fouracres and Jack Shep played Shakespeare to Fey’s Anne Hathaway) available on YouTube yet is beyond me.
The cold open also featured the two other cast members who held down a majority of the lines and screen time not anchored by Fey: Hammed Animashaun, playing Deputy PM David Lammy, and later an obnoxious content creator who critiques movies, as well as the head of a secret lab charged with making the Internet the worst; and Jack Shep, who was all over the place stealing almost every scene he was in.
We also saw what Weekend Update would look like if played somewhat prim and proper, co-anchored by Ania Magliano and Paddy Young. This clip features some funny gags, but does not include the first and so far only Weekend Update guest, Al Nash as frozen food mascot Captain Birdseye come to life chaotically describing his naval policies and food products.
Sex And Skin: What makes SNL UK immediately different from its American predecessor isn’t so much in showing but in telling, as they explicitly point out during Fey’s monologue that no curse words will get censored by the British television authorities.
Sleeper Star: Shep’s Lady Di impersonation was the only thing really holding anyone’s interest in the David Attenborough’s Last Supper premise, and when he returned later to exemplify how stardom changed Shakespeare in shades on a scooter, the transformation of Shep from sleeper star into actual star was perhaps almost complete.
Our Take: As a longtime SNL fan, I have to say I gasped (complimentary) when they immediately followed the monologue with an ad parody, resurrecting the traditional prime fake-ad time slot abandoned in recent years by SNL. And it was a spot-on highlight of the night, to wit, as anti-aging skin cream Undérage by Pedolay made boyfriends and husbands look like pedophile nonces with their newly-young partners.
We really only got a good look at half of the cast in this debut, with the others, especially the women, relegated to background extras since Fey starred in most of the sketches.
Though several of the cast members have extensive experience putting on live comedy with award-winning and award-nominated shows at the Edinburgh Fringe, it’s plausible to think that within Britain, the best-known cast member before last week was Emma Sidi, whose credits have included Taskmaster, Starstruck, Ghosts, and Stath Lets Flats. Sidi got her own showcase as a handsy bra-fitter named Jugs pawing all over Fey in a dressing room, although the physical comedy didn’t seem to get as many titters from the live studio audience as perhaps the surprise cameo by Page.
And then there’s the question of for whom is SNL UK for, anyhow? Does it translate to the UK? Should it? At what point does the show evolve from a copycat SNL to its own thing? The Live Paddington Bear Experience, for example, felt right in line with recent blood-splattered takes on pop culture by the American SNL crew. But this was just the first episode, after all, and cast and crew (led by Late Late Show with James Corden‘s James Longman as the head producer) likely had all of their focus on establishing proof of concept first. SNL UK works. Sure. But what will SNL UK become?
Our Call: With a tried-and-true formula, SNL UK‘s cast most likely will find their voices and establish themselves as a separate entity, albeit with the same plusses and minuses that the American show has. Some sketches and performances will become legendary; but most, forgettable. Unless SNL UK can break out of this formula and determine what makes them special, the show may never match the heights of Monty Python, or even the Canadian alternatives from SCTV through Kids in the Hall. But it’ll still remain a STREAM IT all the same.
Sean L. McCarthy works the comedy beat. He also podcasts half-hour episodes with comedians revealing origin stories: The Comic’s Comic Presents Last Things First.