When Sky announced that it was bringing the legendary US sketch show Saturday Night Live to the UK, the public had questions. Would it be British enough? Cooler than its American cousin?
The answer was emphatically delivered in week one when the cast performed a Hamnet parody, in which William Shakespeare returned to his family from London on a Lime scooter with a mild ketamine addiction and a “c***y little earring”. It was deeply British, a touch provocative, and extremely funny. To get the sketch into the show, the cast had to talk to Sky and “have almost like a board meeting in the hallway about getting ‘c***y’ in, and the meaning of that”, says Jack Shep, who played a Brat-ified version of the bard.
He had to explain how the word had become positive slang in Gen Z culture. We were like, ‘It’s different now!’ That was week one, so that tells you everything you need to know.” Since then, the sketch show has continued to venture near the knuckle when searching for the nation’s funny bone – from skewering former prince Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor over his Jeffrey Epstein links to the Muppet-esque portrayal of Keir Starmer – and it’s worked. SNL UK received a warm – and relieved – reception from viewers and critics alike after its first run, while its sketches have been watched over 54 million times on YouTube since it premiered in March.
National treasures Louis Theroux and Martin Lewis even made cameos as themselves in various skits. Tonight, the show is back for more, just four months after the first series came to an end. No one is more surprised than its cast of rising stars – many of whom had been warned that attempting to bring the live sketch show to a hard-to-please, ever sceptical Britain would be a disaster.
But it makes me feel very patriotic. How else would this country respond to something that’s high risk like this? Of course, we’re just going to say it’s going to be bad.” “People were like, ‘I think it was… good?’” Shep says of SNL UK’s first show.
We obviously had supporters from early on, but I think everyone was very sceptical.” Sitting across from the cast in a London hotel while they’re in junket mode, it’s clear to see that the doubters never needed to worry. Watching them fire jokes back and forth between one another feels like securing front-row tickets to the Wimbledon of comedy, with their electric rapport leaving me with mild whiplash (or rather, quiplash). Surely those comedy sceptics must be eating their words?
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