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Saturday Night Live lost its bite long ago – and it won't find it over here
The Observer
|April 20, 2025
A British version of the once fearless, now formulaic, satirical show is on the way. Can it bring back the fun?
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What makes good satire? The answer might vary depending on who you ask. What is more unifying, however, is what doesn’t. Most would agree it’s things like punching down, cheap jokes, obviousness or, worst of all, failing to actually be funny.
We saw a unique combination of all of the above last weekend, when the American live sketch comedy show Saturday Night Live (SNL) attempted to parody the hit HBO series The White Lotus, setting it among current White House staff. Alongside middling caricatures of Donald Trump and the US health secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr, the pre-recorded skit portrayed the English actor Aimee Lou Wood, who has a gap between her teeth, and her character from the show, Chelsea, as uncharacteristically stupid, with bulging eyes and buck teeth.
“I did find the SNL thing mean and unfunny,” Wood said in a series of Instagram stories responding to the sketch, which drew widespread ire before her criticism. “I am not thin skinned. I actually love being taken the piss out of when it’s clever and in good spirits … I don’t mind caricature – I understand that’s what SNL is. But the rest of the skit was punching up and I/Chelsea was the only one punched down on.”
This kind of foible is rare for SNL. (The show has since apologised to Wood.) But lazy, unfunny sketches have become the show’s new norm. Despite its popularity since 1975, when it was created by the American comedy legend Lorne Michaels, SNL’s reputation and relevance has begun to dwindle. Which is why the news that there will be a British version of the show coming out next year on Sky – titled SNL UK, with Michaels as executive producer – has drawn more scepticism than excitement.
Details are thin, but SNL UK promises to deliver what
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