And very often the first show of the season is not one of the better ones—it takes them a while to find their groove.
We British are known for our stoicism. I sat through it - that’s about the nicest thing I can say about it. I’ll probably watch the second show, for one specific reason.
Ania Magliano is one of those stand-ups who seems to have appeared from nowhere fully formed. A month ago I hadn’t heard of her (Taskmaster annoys me). There was a one hour TV special of one of her shows, we watched it, we were blown away. Desperate to catch her live now. If anyone can rescue SNL(UK) it’s her. But that’s quite an ask.
j
I read this Guardian review of the first episode and I’m still puzzled about something:
The general feeling, I think, will be that the inaugural episode of Saturday Night Live UK – Sky’s version of the famous 51-year-old American original founded and still overseen by the infamous Lorne Michaels – did work.
Infamous Lorne Michaels?
I did some searching to figure out why anyone would consider Michaels infamous. He has ultimate power at SNL. He has made some some ruthless decisions in not hiring or firing some cast members and writers. He has decided that certain guest hosts and musical guests can never come back. I don’t personally see that he has been that much more dictatorial than most people who have been in charge of a long-running show.
I guess the writer might simply having been playing off the word ‘famous’ used earlier in the sentence, but it doesn’t really work. Michaels has a pretty good reputation overall.
Thanks for posting this, I had no idea there had been a German SNL. I watched some of the sketches and they were terrible, but I’m still going through them.
From what I’ve heard, it’s a very stressful show to work for. It’s amusing to note that there are two movies where the bad guy is an imitation of Lorne Michaels (“Austin Powers” and “Brain Candy”).
This is why I don’t want to offer an opinion about whether Michaels is hard to work for because he makes things stressful, since there are opinions going each way.
There have been several attempts to replicate SNL in England over the years, and they never last.
Are you talking about the ones listed in my post #15 or do you know of others?
I think nostalgia keeps people from remembering how bad a lot of SNL has been every year of it’s existence. Lorne’s purposefully tension filled boiler room writing set up means that a lot of sketches aren’t fully formed or are just plain bad. A best of compilation is great. Each individual episode has some real clunkers. It’s especially painful when there is a bad host. It will be interesting to see who they get to host each week. Often when it’s the latest hot actor with a new movie it doesn’t work. But then you sometimes get someone like Adam Driver who seems built for it. I find myself not watching SNL live anymore but I watch the best sketches later on YouTube.
How do you know what are the best sketches?
Jamie Dornan is the host this week, I really don’t know his work
She reminds me of an ex, but I can’t put my finger on why. She doesn’t look like my ex, nor does she sound like her. But I watched her series of Taskmaster convinced Stephanie (my ex) had become famous. I think it must be mannerisms or facial expressions that they both share. Taskmaster really freaked me out as a result.
They don’t put the whole show on YouTube. And usually the really good ones have some sort of buzz going on after they are on.
The production schedule is brutal by nature. It starts on Monday and by the weekend the show has to come together.
Jamie Dornan is most famous for being the male lead in the Fifty Shades of Grey franchise. He was a model before that. So everyone kind of wrote him off, like we did with Robert Pattinson (Twilight). But, like Pattinson, turns out he’s a good actor and a good dude, and pretty funny. Kinda like John Hamm, too.
Here’s clips of him on Graham Norton being funny:
Have you never seen Colin Jost and Michael Che? Laughing at their own (and each other’s) jokes is their jam.
Overall it was about as hit-or-miss as the US SNL with an added dollop of teething pains. Even skilled comedians have to get used to working off cue cards, especially ones that were likely changed at the last minute. (We had the subtitles up, and some of the jokes that popped up on there were not the ones that were actually said - the Shakespeare sketch had a whole bit about him being “queer now” that clearly got cut at the last minute, and just as well). Even Tina Fey looked like she was struggling with the lines, which also suggests that she hadn’t seen the final version before the show started.
Weirdly the last two sketches I think landed the best - the bra fitting lady and then the incoherent rambling guy. I’m not saying I want more incoherent rambling guy but they both felt distinctly British whereas the Shakespeare one didn’t, and the fact they even went with the “What kind of Irish is your granddad” skit showed some promise.
Given a chance, it could get better. Or not. We’ll see.
Um, no.
There’s a thing on the original SNL of changing the cue cards prior to the live show, so as to mess with the performers.