Saturday Night Live UK review – It didn’t fail and could have been a lot worse | culture

IIn the end, it’s a feeling, right? You can count the laughs, calculate the ratio of good to bad lines, the sketches that fly, the sketches that land straight in the mud – but in the end, the comedy show leaves you with a feeling that tells you whether it worked or not.

I think the general feeling is that the opening episode of Saturday Night Live UK – Sky’s version of the iconic 51-year-old American original founded and still overseen by the notorious Lorne Michaels – worked.

Some may feel that they – 11 actors and a writing team of 20 out of more than 1,200 applicants – just got away with it, but others will feel that they managed to do a little better than that.

It began, either very bravely or very foolishly, with an impression of Keir Starmer, a man who even in parody form (by George Foraker, the group’s impressionist) could suck the life out of a room, trying to get over his feelings about Trump (“I can change him!”), and then we went out of the traditional cold open and into the guest host’s monologue.

Tina Fey, the former head writer at SNL before moving on to movies and creating 30 Rock, a show about a show much like SNL, received the honor. Like many sketches to come and like the episode in general, it started off in a sloppy way (a cameo from a Nicola Coughlan game that didn’t work) but warmed up enough to end – thanks to a quick quiz from Graham Norton about Britishness (“Repair Autoshop…?” “Replace Autoshop!”) – in relative triumph.

Then came one of the most powerful sketches, about the highly effective skincare range “Everyone will think your husband is extraordinary!” It’s a Minor, by Bidolai. “He lost his record contract, and some of his fans, but not all of them,” says one woman. It wasn’t alone in lasting too long, but this is almost as old-fashioned a SNL tradition as a cold open.

A bafflingly bloated sketch about David Attenborough’s Last Supper with revamped iconography at least gave us a worryingly good Diana (Jack Shipp), and was followed by two pieces that hit their mark much better.

The first had Hamed Animation as a harmlessly honest film critic, interviewing two Hollywood stars and unable to understand why “it was so bad. All the way through.” In the second, he was part of a team dedicated to making the Internet “as bad as possible.” This was followed, perhaps inevitably, by the first real lie of the evening about a woman giving birth to an attention seeker who was in every sense a desperate effort.

However, the team pulled through with a solid Weekend Update by Anya Magliano and Paddy Young, which managed what in this creepy, cowardly era felt like some adult-appropriate jokes (special props for the “Boris Pistorius/Saddam Williams” line, the Beckham joke and the joke about “It’s a sin” being turned into a musical “as if a TV show about the AIDS crisis could impress anyone”).

Shakespeare’s play (which includes the one area in which we’ll forever be superior to the United States – swearing) was better, for my money, than Paddington’s, but it was certainly just as unavoidable. Then a piece of absolute rubbish about a woman in a bra and thong but getting ready for “45 Seconds with Fouracres” as he navigated perfect variations of “What Kind of Irish Is Your Grandpa?” And we were off.

Oh, and there were two terrible performances from Wet Leg but let’s not dwell on that.

It could have been much worse. It could have been much better. But it will likely become the case as the team and audience settle in over the coming weeks and we may see some recurring characters and start to build a rhythm and relationship with the show.

And honestly – it was refreshing to see such an ambition/piece of madness as retooling an old American brand for this rotten island in action. Didn’t fail. In the coming weeks, let’s hope we can achieve real success.