If there is one thing British TV seems to have had a huge number of, it’s sketch comedy shows. Monty Python’s Flying Circus, Alas Smith and Jones, Mitchell and Webb, Not the Nine O’Clock News, Big Train, Little Britain, A Bit of Fry and Laurie, French and Saunders… that’s maybe a third of them. It’s as if pretty much anyone with sketch comedy ideas could get a show. Then after the show is over the cast get to make appearances on another uniquely British sort of show, the “It’s Sort of A Game Show But Really It’s Just An Excuse For Comedians to Kid Around And Get Paid,” like QI or Would I Lie To You.
US and Canadian TV seems a little short in this regard. There’s Saturday Night Live, and of course Mad TV was a thing, and we had Royal Canadian Air Farce and SCTV here, now both gone. Cable pops a few up now and then, but they’re just not seemingly as common.
The BBC has been scouting the Edinburgh Fringe for cheap entertainment since the 1950s. For these college students and struggling actors, sketch comedy was an accessible entree into the world of entertainment and Edinburgh was where TV and film scouts would go each year to see the cream rise to the top of the barrel.
By comparision the US produces scads of sitcoms - Seinfeld, Friends, Frasier, How I Met Your Mother, Modern Families.
That’s not to say that the UK doesn’t produce sitcoms (Blackadder, The Office) or the US doesn’t produce sketch shows (SNL) but their respective television industries seem to have different comparative advantages. There may be cultural reasons for this, or it might just be a case of early random hits, followed by success breeding success.
And Wayne & Schuster and Kids in the Hall (not to mention lesser known shows like Smith & Smith, CODCO, Four on the Floor, Baroness von Sketch Show and Bizarre).
Aren’t all of the British shows you mention in your post also gone?
And, for that matter, even discounting relatively recent cable sketch shows (which the OP mentioned), if we’re going back decades, the U.S. also had In Living Color, Fridays, The Carol Burnett Show, Not Necessarily the News, Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In, etc.
Radio comedy is very strong in Britain - lots of short form, short run shows on BBC Radio, which must run through dozens of comedians annually. Radio comedy is the place where you can give your find from Edinburgh Fringe the chance to impress and build an audience before unleashing them onto TV. Its also easy to build panel and ensemble shows in that format when you need to go beyond your own three funny voices. Mitchell and Webb and lots of others came through that route.
US comedians don’t seem to play well together. Although this is based mainly on suffering through some of those appalling ‘comedy’ roasts, there is little sense of serving the show - feeding lines for others to get the laugh, knowing when to shut up, bantering, not being so full of yourself etc, which is minimum entry-level for Brit panel shows. Perhaps its a stronger theatrical tradition - many British comedians are also proper actors, and can take direction. I think stand-up in the US gives you different skills but may not crush your desire to be centre stage.
As ever, Wikipedia provides a vast list of notable sketch comedy television series by country. The biggest surprise is the large numbers, from both Britain and the US, that I have never even heard of let alone seen.
My sense is that comedy sketch shows are actually a bit out of fashion in the UK right now. I can’t think of any notable new ones, certainly not up there with the flood we had from the 70s to the 90s. I wonder if that’s anything to do with sketch shows often leaning heavily on their references to current affairs, and with streaming, that’s harder to pull off.
You may be too dismissive of US cable sketch comedy. Dave Chapelle’s show was huge in its day, and just off the top of my head the sketch shows by Amy Shumer, Key & Peele, and Bob & David (Odenkirk and Cross) are fairly well known.
Yeah, I think this may be one big factor.
And that’s another big factor. Scripted radio shows in general stayed alive and well in Britain long after they died out in the US, and, with a very few exceptions, radio sketch comedy has never really been a thing here.
I totally forgot about Mr. Show. I love that show.
I also forgot about A Black Lady Sketch Show (the co-winner, along with Saturday Night Live, for Most Literally Named Television Program) and Baroness Von Sketch.
The point about Britons loving radio sketch comedy’s a good one; I know Mitchell and Webb started there. Radio skit shows sound so old school to me - but David Mitchell and Robert Webb are a little younger than I am, and essentially their entire fame was built in the 21st century.
My immediate reaction to the OPs question was: Cambridge Footlights.
The BBC (particularly) has historically cherry picked comedians from the Footlights, and the Footlights do (I presume this is still true) sketch comedy. These comedians then carry on doing the same things they’ve always done when they appear on TV. After this pattern has been set, if you didn’t go to Cambridge but are looking to break into TV, copying the format is an obvious strategy.
Here’s a list former Footlights members who went on to better things. Many of these names appeared in sketch shows.
I can’t prove this is the reason; but as I said, it was my first thought.
The Oxford Revue (Michael Palen, Terry Jones, Dudley Moore, Rowan Atkinson, etc) is the other half of that equation. The Fringe is where the Cantabs and Oxonians went to show up each other.
Wikipedia does the longest list of American sketch shows, longer even than their list of British shows. Of course, being Wikipedia, it includes some doubtful entries.