I’ll admit it, when SNL UK was first announced, I assumed it would struggle to live up to the reputation of its namesake and would end up cancelled and swiftly forgotten about. However, its first 5 episodes have proved me incredibly wrong. From the start, the cast seemed comfortable and confident, and the sketches witty and outrageous. And this comfortability has only grown, as felt evident to me in the 5th episode, airing after a week-long break that has only served to revitalise the cast and crew.
This episode, hosted by Nicola Coughlan, shows that SNL UK has managed to create its own strong identity outside of its American counterpart, already becoming self-referential through sketches such as 45 seconds with Fouracres or Hand in Hand (in Hand) during Weekend Update. The episode certainly featured low points, such as Paula from Accounts, but broadly speaking, SNL UK has cemented itself as a mainstay in the UK comedy scene.
The best sketch this evening was headed up by George Fouracres, who was also undeniably the star of the episode. His eponymous sketch 45 Seconds with Fouracres was a reprisal of a sketch in the first episode in which he rattled off a series of Irish accents before singing in Gaeilge. This week, he instead listed names of produce, interspersed with him saying, “Epstein didn’t kill himself”. It felt to me that this sketch epitomised the difference between SNL and SNL UK. The UK version of the show has eschewed the American tradition of winking and nudging around controversial topics, instead leaning into absurdist British humour in a sketch that has no real structure or storyline, just maddened singing. It’s completely antithetical to the structure of SNL sketches, which is what makes it unique and hilarious.
My other favourites of the night all shared a characteristic in common – ridiculous twists. The monologue portion of SNL always tends to feel a little bloated and awkward, with hosts looking stuck between acting and giving a speech. Nicola Coughlan’s speech this week opted to instead reveal Jimmy Fallon and go on a mad dash through the audience and the backstage of the studio, revitalising a fairly tired portion of the show. This subversion of expectations return in the Big Horrid Clump sketch, in which a woman begins to advertise a bag organiser before Annabel Marlow smashes her head into a table and proclaims “That’s enough out of you, bitch!”. The sketch then pivots very successfully into an advertisement for a “big horrid clump” of all your possessions instead, subverting our expectations in a way that made the sketch much funnier than it would’ve been had it been upfront from the beginning.
This ability to create buildup in sketches was also exemplified in Live from QVC’s Jewellery Store, in which Emma Sidi attempts to present an item on the shopping channel before revealing increasingly worse medical issues. While this sketch could have started with her hand being grey and shrivelled, the build from saying she had been ill, to only one of her fingers having grown, to said shrivelled hand made for a sketch that felt fleshed out with real development.
Nicola Coughlan’s Faraway Tree rap and Who Wants to Remain a Millionaire were enjoyable, with the former also featuring a cameo from Jimmy Fallon and the latter providing a tour de force of impressions from George Fouracres as Keir Starmer, Al Nash as Jeremy Clarkson and Larry Dean as Peter Mandelson, but weren’t particularly memorable. An honourable mention also goes to Learn to Fly, in which a man is emasculated on holiday and then poisons the pilots of his flight in order to redeem himself to his wife by landing the plane. George Fouracres also led this sketch, but the real star of it was Hammed Animashaun, whose adlibs led to Fouracres corpsing. But just like Fouracres character within the sketch, this one didn’t stick the landing, with the sketch feeling as though it should’ve ended about 30 seconds before it did.
The real let-downs of this episode, though, were Paula from Accounts, Weekend Update, and the sketch featuring a serial killer and a chronically late woman. The broad sweeping concept behind Paula from Accounts was strong – it centred on the absurd relationship stories that British magazines print on their front cover, with Paula being the woman that all these absurd things happen to. However, the sketch was clearly built around this idea with no real structure or story. It felt as though the concept had not been fully fleshed out and should’ve had more development.
Contrastingly, the sketch in which Nicola Coughlan is late to a hen do, only to find out that everyone has been killed by a serial killer, save for Jack Shep and Annabel Marlow, has a very fleshed-out structure and plot. The issue with this sketch is that it’s too formulaic. Even when the serial killer sat up and chimed in to tell Coughlan’s character that her lateness was an issue, I felt completely unsurprised. This sketch felt completely forgettable and was a real waste of 3 minutes.
Finally, my biggest disappointment of the night was Weekend Update. While this was as consistently funny as it has been, and certainly much stronger than Paula From Accounts and the serial killer sketch, Ania Magliano and Paddy Young have failed to create their own British Weekend Update. This still feels like an imitation of its American counterpart without its own identity. Featuring an entirely gratuitous and unwelcoming third cameo from Jimmy Fallon, this section felt slightly fumbling and lost. Magliano and Young desperately need to decide how to create this segment with a distinct personality, and how to build chemistry between the two of them rather than existing separately in the sketch as they do currently.
Though parts of this episode were lacking, I think this is a fantastically strong continuation of a UK translation of an American mainstay. The series has not lost momentum or become less funny, and while there is definite room for improvement, I think this series as a whole is a great omen for the future. The show is young, and has incredible talent behind it, meaning its potential as it grows is exponential.
Editor: Grace Lees