Live from Warsaw, it’s Saturday Night: A visit to Poland’s own SNL
Other than the “stairs” up to the balcony—a rickety ladder that women in heels charge up precariously—I am in a near-perfect replica of Studio 8H, located on the outskirts of Warsaw. There is the large, Grand Central Station-esque clock the camera pans past; the Saturday Night Live branding on the walls behind the musical guest. (Tonight, it’s Polish trip-hop duo Xxanaxx.) And there is the door from which, minutes from now, morning talk-show host Filip Chajzer will emerge to deliver his opening monologue. The producers later tell me they were so intent on copying America’s flagship SNL that they even use boom mics, an otherwise-antiquated live television staple, to get it just right, down to the last detail.
That close, deferential devotion to mimicking the original SNL also speaks to the underdog ethos running throughout Poland’s pop culture. In the last decade, the country’s most popular shows have all largely been homegrown versions of international reality franchises: The X Factor, Poland’s Got Talent, Poland’s Next Top Model. Poland’s adaptation of The Nanny has experienced a long, successful run, as has its take on Married… With Children (the title literally translates to The Not So Goods). Still, the consensus is that, if it’s Polish-made, it’s second rate. It’s a message I heard time and again before I attended a single taping of SNL Polska. “When people find out something is done here in a foreign format, it’s always like, ‘Yeah, the Polish version will be terrible,’” cast member Helena Ganjalyan says, though she dismisses this as “typical Polish complaining.”
Launched in December 2017, Saturday Night Live Polska joins an extensive slate of international versions of the show. Canada, France, Italy, Spain, Japan, and Germany have all taken stabs at the franchise; a Chinese version is supposedly in the works for later this year. Of course, simply being part of the SNL complex doesn’t guarantee success. Just as for every Bill Murray there’s a dozen Morwenna Banks, many of the international versions have seen short-lived tenures. For some, like Spain, it was a case of being too faithful to the original; many of its sketches were simply Spanish translations of American ones, with only passing regard for making the cultural references work. Others, like the French-language SNL Québec, simply didn’t become big enough hits to justify keeping them around. Now nine seasons deep, South Korea’s version remains the most popular of these international editions, having successfully tapped into its country’s customs through plastic surgery jokes and cameos from K-pop stars.
But despite that “typical Polish complaining,” Poland certainly seems primed for an SNL-type show, one that can satirize current events in a way not currently seen on its networks. In 2015, the nation took a hard shift toward right-wing conservatism; in just the last year, both reproductive rights and freedom of the courts have been threatened, saved only through mass protests. And unlike, say, SNL Arabia—which the Egyptian government banned in February, citing its “sexual phrases and insinuations”—SNL Polska isn’t subject to that kind of stringent policing or censorship. It’s broadcast via the subscription-only internet service Showmax, which allows it to skirt the heavily Catholic nation’s few moral watchdogs, like the National Council For Radio And Television—a governing board that, while having only ever issued a single fine (to a TV station for showing political protests), still remains a threat. It also doesn’t have to worry about placating advertisers. If ever there were a market and a time for edgy content, even the mild sort Saturday Night Live produces, Poland in 2018 would seem to be it.
Jurek Dzięgielewski is SNL Polska’s head of content, perhaps the closest thing the show has to a Lorne Michaels. (He spent much of his childhood in Canada, mainlining the Wayne’s World movies.) As he notes, just as the American SNL has benefited from Trump’s election, Poland’s current administration gives them plenty of material to work with. But Dzięgielewski says his goal is to say something about their policies, not just mock the political players.
“I think it’s common knowledge that the head of the ruling party is a very short man,” Dzięgielewski says. “It would be really easy to take a shot at that, but that’s something we would never do. We ridicule people for what they say. It’s bad comedy when you ridicule someone’s lack of height, because they have no control over how tall they are. It would be unfair.”
As with the original, Poland’s SNL balances its political satire with sketches that are more generally absurd. The taping I saw began with a cold open mocking Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki’s recent, poorly subtitled address to the nation about outlawing the phrase “Polish concentration camps.” (“Poland is moving in a good direction,” cast member Szymon Mysłakowski said as Morawiecki, while subtitles urged viewers, “Leave the country.”) A faithfully deadpan Weekend Update lightly poked fun at Poland’s neighbor countries (“Vilnius [Lithuania] is like the G-spot of Europe. No one knows where it is, but once you find it, it’s awesome”). A sketch about a clean-cut youth getting a swastika tattoo, and another about male superheroes urging a female mugging victim to just accept her situation, only lightly skirted controversial topics.