When SNL UK premiered in March, it did so with a monologue from host Tina Fey, former head writer of the flagship American comedy series. In a back and forth with Irish actor Nicola Coughlan, playing the classic SNL role of “celebrity audience plant”, Fey said she got the gig because “none of you f---ers would do it” – immediately signalling that this new version of the notoriously censored original would have a little more bite.
Local talent probably avoided the gig, Coughlan remarked because “British people tend to root for the failure of others.” Halfway through the show’s second season, nothing could be further from the truth.
The spin-off, executive produced by SNL creator Lorne Michaels, has not just found its stride but is running laps around its American counterpart, which is having a run of dire, lethargic episodes and is in the headlines for the sexist monologue from most recent host, comedian Shane Gillis. While he was issuing an apology for accidentally swearing on last week’s episode, the UK version made the most of their “lawless” standards for cursing – and got a few of their own shots in.
SNL UK’s sketches and impressions skewering local celebrities and news with a distinctly British flavour are only picking up steam. In a cold open that’s racked up more than 2 million views on YouTube, King Charles meets with socially inept American tech billionaires who have created an AI assistant for him. The Deeply Intelligent Autonomous Neurokinetic Android – or D.I.A.N.A. – wears a revenge dress, decides she “shan’t be taking orders any more” and goes full Terminator. It’s material that would work anywhere, but is right at home in the world of non-rhotic accents.
“People kept asking us how are we going to do a British spin on [SNL]? But actually, we’ve been doing sketch [comedy] in this country forever,” Paddy Young tells me over Zoom. He and Ania Magliano are two stand-ups who, after rounds of auditions she describes as “a series of live gigs to audiences and then also screen tests to complete silence in these vast TV studios”, were paired up behind the desk as co-anchors of the Weekend Update segment.
They describe the format of the show as a skeleton, one that mimics the specific structure of its source material, with fleshy bits they build out fresh each week. Every Friday it feels impossible to pull off. But as Michaels famously said: “The show doesn’t go on because it’s ready; it goes on because it’s 11.30.” On Sunday, it’s done, and on Monday, you start building out the guts all over again.
While every cast member pulls their weight and finds their niche, Weekend Update anchors are the ones who do it in their voice. Ever since the inaugurator uttered the words, “I’m Chevy Chase, and you’re not” in 1975, the anchors are also the only SNL cast members to announce themselves by name on live TV every week.
The dynamic between a pair of hosts is its own specific alchemy. Fey and Jimmy Fallon gave off a teacher’s pet holding down the fort next to a practical joker. Seth Meyers was the straight man to Amy Poehler’s most base instincts. The current co-anchors, Colin Jost and Michael Che, have a fratty frenemies quality.
“At the beginning, before the first season, we were talking more explicitly about our dynamic,” Magliano says. “Is this something we need to create and decide? But then when Seth Meyers was over visiting, he said to us, ‘You don’t need to plan any of this. Literally just focus on telling the jokes and the right stuff will come out’. It’s really useful to have some people … who can just be confident for you when we didn’t necessarily have the experience to be fully confident in it.”
“The moment you try and shock or pull people’s heartstrings, that’s not the game. All we’re worried about is being funny.”
Paddy Young
As two gigging comics, Young and Magliano know what it feels like to be alone on stage as a joke thuds in the room, or to not have anyone to pat you on the back after a particularly stellar show. “It is nice that we’re up there together,” Magliano says. “When you do stand-up and you’re up there on your own, you’re sort of like, ‘Here we go. This is a judge of my character and my soul, whether I’m good enough on a fundamental level’. But when we’re doing it as a team, if it goes badly, we’re crashing and burning together.”
The show’s overnight ratings on Sky One and streaming service NOW average about 140,000 viewers on Saturday nights, but it’s a show built for catch-up and online audiences. In April, Deadline reported the show had more than 86 million views of individual clips on Instagram Reels and YouTube.
The cottage industry of streamers and tiny-microphone reaction accounts further boosted the status of the show recently, thanks to Weekend Update’s ruthless teardown of Ed Sheeran after he bowed to pressure from billionaire stadium owner Robert Kraft. While its American contemporaries covering the story barely went further than a gag about Macklemore’s music being bad, Magliano and Young left nothing in the tank.
During the segment’s two-minute run, Magliano pointed out the hypocrisy of Sheeran being an advocate for “causes that are allowed” like the war in Ukraine. “Genuinely though, this crisis is the worst thing that’s happened to Ed Sheeran fans since their head injury,” she said biting back a smile, while Young joked that Jeffrey Epstein “had himself killed” to avoid being associated with “wealthy corpsemaxxer” Kraft.
“I think the moment you try and shock or pull people’s heartstrings or whatever, that’s not the game,” he says. “All we’re worried about is being funny and being funny in as many ways as possible.” And if there are any hard lines holding them back from going too far? “We just let other people tell us what the limits are. We just try and make everything as funny as we can.”
By the time the clips started getting traction online, they were already at their desks trying to work new jokes about Prince Andrew’s bodily fluids into the next weekend’s packet of punchlines.
“When we did that Ed Sheeran thing, we were really proud of it, and we heard that people liked it, but we were back in the office on Tuesday worrying about the next thing,” Young says.
Magliano adds that the job can be like a hamster in a wheel, with little time to pause and reflect on its impact. “There’s a thing in stand-up … you only feel as good as your last gig. And so I do think the threat of the looming week does mean you can’t spend too much time being self-congratulatory about what did work, or being self-negative about what didn’t.”
With James Norton and Cynthia Erivo announced for the next two episodes at the time we speak, I ask Magliano and Young for the names on their dream list of SNL UK hosts.
Magliano’s picks? Hugh Grant, Diane Morgan and mentalist Derren Brown. “I’m really into magic at the moment. I think it’s fantastic … Imagine an SNL where there’s also a lot of magic in it.”
“You have to bear in mind that when you ask Ania who she wants to come on, she sees it more like a dream dinner party,” Young cautions. “She’s thinking, ‘Wouldn’t it be quite nice if someone did a card trick for me for half an hour when I’m bored?’ So just take that with a massive pinch of salt.”
“Much longer than half an hour,” she adds.
On Young’s list? Steve Coogan and the Ugandan warlord at the centre of the viral Kony 2012 campaign. “Remember him? Imagine if he did it.”
SNL UK is streaming in Australia on HBO Max.
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