Sky is owned by Comcast, which also owns NBC, which famously runs SNL. Of course, Lorne Michaels’ personal fiefdom Broadway Video is also involved; he’ll serve as an executive producer. “For over 50 years Saturday Night Live has held a unique position in TV and in our collective culture, reflecting and creating the global conversation all under the masterful comedic guidance of Lorne Michaels,” said Cecile Frot-Coutaz, CEO of Sky Studios and Chief Content Officer, Sky. “The show has discovered and nurtured countless comedy and musical talents over the years and we are thrilled to be partnering with Lorne and the SNL team to bring an all-British version of the show to UK audiences next year – all live from London on Saturday night!”
There have been a few international Saturday Night Lives over the years, none with much staying power (let alone the staying power of America’s 50-year-old comedy institution). Why Michaels would choose to launch another prominent English-language SNL now, at 80 years old, is an amusing mystery. (Anything to avoid picking a successor for regular SNL, we guess.) Our SNL is as American as it gets; there have rarely been any non-North American cast members, with the exception of a brief tenure for Morwenna Banks (she’s now a major celebrity, i.e., a voice actor on Peppa Pig). That said, Michaels took a lot of inspiration for SNL from Monty Python, so maybe this is a full circle moment for him.
On the flip side, though, the U.K. has a robust tradition of televised sketch comedy, from Python to Fry And Laurie to The Mighty Boosh and beyond. They never really needed a “Saturday Night Live U.K.” because they’ve never had that gap in programming that the U.S. has. While SNL is a cornerstone of American comedy and a launching pad for comics, the U.K. has a plethora of panel shows where comedians get to show their stuff. Even in the realm of sitcom, an art form that’s about American as pie, the British not only have their own thing going but have also given us the blueprint for some of the most successful series of the 21st century. See: The Office, Veep, Shameless, and most recently Ghosts. Even All In The Family, that hallmark of American television, was based on the British show Till Death Do Us Part. Can it work the other way, where the British make a classic American show their own? It’s hard to imagine, but hey, they are good at comedy.
