Brace yourself for, "Live from London, it's Saturday night!" After decades of the idea floating around, a British version of Saturday Night Live has been announced.
British broadcaster Sky has confirmed that SNL UK is in the works, with a “star-studded line-up of hosts” and a format that will stay true to the American original’s “live, fast-paced style”.
Reading the announcement, I groaned, 'why now?' Followed by, 'who is asking for this?'
Comedy television franchising is a well-trod road. We’ve seen plenty of British shows successfully make the jump across the Atlantic. The Office and Shameless being two very stand-out examples of British exports to a US television market. Very few have made the hop the other way – had you heard of The Brighton Belles, the mid-1990s British version of The Golden Girls? Until researching this column, neither had I.
Comedy imports into the UK aren't always flops. In the past month, LOL: Last One Laughing UK has made a splash as, arguably, one of the first major unscripted streaming comedy hits in the UK. The new Amazon Prime format is based on the Japanese show Documental, and the British version is the 28th take on the hit show, with Albanian, Canadian, Iranian and Spanish takes already available.
Last One Laughing feels like something new – is it a panel show? Is it a reality TV show? Is it a hidden camera show? This sense of novelty will have certainly have played a significant role in its recent success. That and the fact that it was a show packed with some of the funniest people in Britain right now, including Richard Ayoade, Bob Mortimer and Judi Love.
Sketch shows are certainly not new to British audiences. Monty Python immediately springs to mind, along with The Fast Show, A Bit of Fry and Laurie, Goodness Gracious Me and French and Saunders (which will forever be the funniest thing to have ever been committed to camera, in my humble opinion). Dragging myself, and my references, into the 21st century there has been Little Britain, That Mitchell and Webb Look and The Lateish Show with Mo Gilligan.
Pre-dating all of that, we have Beyond the Fringe, a 1960s satirical sketch stage show written and performed by Alan Bennett, Peter Cook, Jonathan Miller and Dudley Moore. Along with Monty Python, it’s Beyond the Fringe that Lorne Michaels, the lauded Canadian-American creator and producer of SNL, has cited as one of his primary comedy influences in the past.
"They had the same effect on me as the Beatles had had,” Michaels told journalist Christopher Hitchens for a 1995 Vanity Fair piece about Beyond the Fringe, which the story dubbed the “Kings of Comedy”.
“I thought, This is what you could want to do with your life. The humour wasn’t campus or college-like. It was sophisticated,” Michaels went on to say, “You know how comedy is normally about laughs but sometimes goes further and achieves wit?”
Which brings me back to my original question. Why are we about to be subjected to a British rehashing of a format that was originally inspired by British stage and screen greats dating back to the 1960s?
The impact of SNL cannot be understated. It’s launched the careers of many of the biggest names in American comedy – Eddie Murphy, Bill Murray, Adam Sandler, Chris Farley, Will Ferrell, Tina Fey, Amy Poehler, Kristen Wiig, Andy Samberg, Kate McKinnon and Pete Davidson, to name just a few. And there is a generous handful of sketches that I come back to time and time again. Wiig’s 1920s "Don't make me sing" sketch from the 35th season has the power to make me cry laughing every time I watch it.
That said, attempts to replicate SNL’s exact format outside the US haven’t been successful in the past.
In the 1980s, Saturday Live aired on British television. Lasting from 1985 until 1988, the show was loosely inspired by SNL’s sketch-comedy format, and starred the likes of Ben Elton, Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie. But the show didn’t make it out of the 1980s. Then there have been Canadian, Japanese, Italian, Spanish and Egyptian versions, like the original British spin-off, none have had the longevity or cultural impact of the original American version. Rebooted in 2021, the Korean version is probably the most successful international iteration, while Saturday Night Live bil Arabi, or SNL Arabia, only lasted on Egyptian television from 2016 to 2018.
Why do we think a second British take on the show will be any different?
Sure, SNL delivers great observational sketches, embedded in the pop culture and politics. British television already has that covered. Panel show Have I Got News for You, now in its 69th season, delivers biting weekly take downs of current affairs. And on social media, we have more than our fair share of hilarious sketch comics, including Munya Chawawa and Abi Clarke. If British TV comedy wants to push boundaries, time and budget would be better spent supporting new voices and fresh formats, rather than dusting off a decades-old American blueprint.
This isn't to denigrate SNL. I enjoy a Ryan Gosling Close Encounter sketch as much as the next person, and I have really enjoyed seeing SNL spotlight Arab comics and musicians in recent seasons. Dave Chappelle showing support for people in Palestine in his January opening monologue for the show is the best thing to happen on the series in years. My point is that it's already being done.
So no, the world doesn’t need a British version of SNL. The UK has nothing to prove on the comedy front – it has already given us Monty Python, Blackadder, Absolutely Fabulous, The Thick of It, Peep Show, The Mighty Boosh, Fleabag, The Vicar of Dibley, The Inbetweeners – I could go on and I probably am; as you read this I am likely having an in-person rant on this very topic.
Instead of borrowing someone else’s model, British comedy should keep doing what it’s always done best – making the world laugh in its own brilliantly off-beat way.
