Saturday Night Live UK sees the live stand-up show tried out in the UK, but with a British cast, and Tina Fey as guest host… all for better or worse?
Let’s go through the output piece-by-piece….
The Keir Starmer sketch
The canned laughter machine is working overtime, for sure. If the guy dressed as Keir Starmer (George Fouracres) wasn’t in a No.10 Downing Street setting, you wouldn’t know that’s who he was playing. Plus, they’ve only got one black guy in the cast, Hammed Animashaun, so he plays David Lammy, who’s also black. Despite looking like he has Parkinsons in the teaser, Animashaun is as wooden as he was in the trailer, when Tina Fey turned up.
For myself, when I heard Iran bombed Diego Garcia, I thought that was one of the new cast members of The Last Of Us Season 3!
Tina Fey’s first segment:
- And since it’s a UK show, why is the first host American?
And if the audience ARE real, they must be being paid to clap. When Nicola Coughlan just happens to be in the audience, there’s a lot of whooping from said audience… except from those we can see.
It’s also apparently hilarious that Tina uses the f-word in reply to a pointless question from Nicola, which isn’t really a question, but just part of the stilted script. As it turned out, the ‘question’ was the one I also posed. The answer? “Because none of you fuckers would do it“. Oh, my aching sides…
And before the segment was over, Tina Fey made a rape joke. Well done, love(!)
Anti-ageing cream advert “Underage”:
- “Works so well, everyone will think your husband is a nonce“. This made the grade as a joke? Along with all the endless paedo jokes? REALLY?! Fucking hell, it was shit!
David Attenborough’s Last Supper:
- Another complete miss, although with the cast making it IMMENSELY OBVIOUS that they can’t remember any of the script to save their lives, as you can see their eyes scanning the autocue from left to right.
Movie review sketch:
- It gets worse and worse. And shows all Animashaun can do is shout.
Bad Internet sketch:
- Again, unlike the canned audience, I didn’t laugh once. They’re trying to be deadpan, but just come across as bored. It’s all so forced.
It takes a whole team to make the internet this bad.#SNLUK #SNL #SaturdayNightLive pic.twitter.com/wLH9GoUsD6
— Sky TV (@skytv) March 22, 2026
Pregnant woman sketch:
- Tina Fey’s constant staring at the autocue really jars.
Wet Leg:
- I liked their song about a Chaise Longue. This time, their tunes were Mangetout and Catch These Fists, where two actors pretended to be real audience members. Meh. And it’s probably not sanitary for the singer to crawl along the floor, either.
Weekend Update:
- Saying “paedophilia” gets a laugh. Why?
Ania Magliano‘s delivery is as flat as her man clothes after they’ve been pressed.
Paddy Young ‘jokes’ that influencers can’t make it out of Dubai alive. Twitter made those jokes when Trump started the war. For both, their ‘jokes’ are so bad, that the one not speaking at that moment has to clap the other, in order to tell the audience what to do.
When live, I saw people tweeting how funny this segment was. They must’ve changed channel. It’s fucking shit!
Hamnet, Paddington, 34 Seconds With Fouracres:
- These were the remaining sketches, and like the rest, not one made me laugh, or even raise a smile. Fuck me, this is desperate shite.
Saturday Night Live UK has a very diverse writers list totalling 18 PEOPLE! It took 18 people to come up with the lamest pile of shit ever to grace my TV screen? Don’t the cast add anything to that? Y’know… the supposed comedians? Who are meant to WRITE STUFF?
Original producer Lorne Michaels clearly had nothing to do with it, either, given that he’s just listed as “Executive Producer”, which means he owns the format.
Saturday Night Live UK (SNL UK) continues next Saturday at 10pm on Sky One.
It won’t be available to pre-order on Blu-ray or DVD, but other stuff is on the New DVD, Blu-ray, 3D and 4K releases UK page.
Cert: 
Running time: 75 minutes per episode (8 episodes)
Release date: Saturday March 21st
Studio: Sky One
Format: 1.78:1
Director: Liz Clare
Producer: James Longman
Writers: Celya Ab, Ayo Adenekan, Keith Akushie, Omar Badawy, Chris Cantrill, Laura Claxton, James Farmer, Nathan Ford, Ellie Fulcher, Bella Hull, Hari Kanth, Humphrey Ker, Grainne Maguire, Joseph Moore, Omodara Olatunji, Al Roberts, Lorna Rose Treen, Louis Waymouth
Cast:
Hammed Animashaun
Ayoade Bamgboye
Larry Dean
Celeste Dring
George Fouracres
Ania Magliano
Annabel Marlow
Al Nash
Jack Shep
Emma Sidi
Paddy Young
Reviewer of movies, videogames and music since 1994. Aortic valve operation survivor from the same year. Running DVDfever.co.uk since 2000. Nobel Peace Prize winner 2021.