Writes Charlotte Ivers, in "Saturday Night Live UK review: Britain is funny but this isn’t yet/There’s talent in the cast — shame this Sky One debut was four parts American gurning, one part Princess Diana" (London Times).
A description of the "cold open": "Keir Starmer... and David Lammy... are psyching themselves up to phone Donald Trump, with the help of their 'Gen Z adviser.'... Keir: 'Oh golly, what if Donald shouts at me?' Gen Z adviser: 'You’re looking for more of a special situationship.'"
Also: "In a sketch parodying news headlines, the question is asked whether, once Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor is in prison, he will 'be able to keep his mouth shut.' This is followed, I regret to inform you, by the punchline: '"I hope not," said his cellmate’s penis.'"
I don't see what's American about those jokes. And I don't see why the SNL format forces writers to use American-style humor! Worse, don't excuse your bad jokes by claiming they are American. The SNL format — cold open, monologue, sketches, Weekend Update, music performance — is an empty shell into which writers can insert whatever humor the producers want. Take responsibility. Or withdraw into the vale of tears and suffer and torture yourself. Apparently, you find that amusing.
As for the "grinning, whooping, gurning American mania" — I only know the word "gurning" from the perennial reports of the World Gurning Championships. I see the NYT had one last year: "In This Pageant, the Ugliest Face Wins/The World Gurning Championships in northern England celebrate the centuries-old art of face-pulling."That's been going on for years. I remember reading about the World Gurning Championships in LIFE magazine in the 1960s:
Here, you can buy that issue of LIFE on eBay. It was March 14, 1969. The cover story is "The Daring Contraption Called LEM." Inside: "The Race for the SST." And here's an ad: "McDonald's introduces Big Mac/A meal disguised as a sandwich." And: "Why is the Camaro the pace car again?/Because it's the Hugger."That's all so American. And the American point of view was that gurning was a British oddity.
ADDED:
More clips from the show: here.
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51 comments:
And I don't see why the SNL format forces writers to use American-style humor
…and why use American politics? You wankers have your own problems… January I was staying at a lodge where there was a communal dinner table. Sundowners before. We’re the only two guests so the owner’s mum dines with us. Best snobby Cotswold: eowhhhh- I HATE that Donald. Trump. Great 😞
If we had to psychoanalyze why everyone’s willing to sacrifice all of their positive human qualities just to talk Trump smack it probably boils down to the old SNL line with Jon Lovitz playing Mike Dukakis at the debate- I can’t believe I’m losing to this guy! Jungian ego inflation…
One of the reasons Sky took the risk on SNL UK is because a sketch show is perfect for clipping up and putting on social media (especially YouTube). SNL US gets far more of its viewers from social media than it does from TV.
Doesn't seem like I'm missing anything.
…one more then I go away: in case like me you ate wondering what the Hugger is it was apparently the name of a 1969 Camaro special edition package ‘The Hugger’ with some upgrades and an iconic orange paint. Interesting to me, The Hugger was before my time but the dad of my next door neighbors in North Carolina raced a Camaro stock car with a similar color orange…
Larry David is the American many Brits find most funny.
That's quite the claim.
Ask me who is the Brit many Americans find most funny.
I have no idea.
SNL US gets far more of its viewers from social media than it does from TV
Kak is correct. They’re hunting for the ‘I can see Russia from my house’ knockout but since the US SNL is an old jalopy best go with two old jalopies. The strategy is also why CNN stays in the propaganda business when not even the choir watches anymore…
Here’s the cold open.
Ask me who is the Brit many Americans find most funny.
I don’t know but Steve Coogan is the Brit Britons find most funny for being the comedian Americans find least funny…
Like python but lame
Admit the ugly, totalitarian truth: the wrong humor in Britain can now get you imprisoned.
"Ask me who is the Brit many Americans find most funny."
Ricky Gervais? Jimmy Carr? At one time it would have been any one of the Monty Python cast.
"Ask me who is the Brit many Americans find most funny."
Benny Hill.
"boatbuilder said...
"Ask me who is the Brit many Americans find most funny."
Benny Hill." At one time maybe, but he's been dead for over 30 years.
Omg that looks lame
SNL is a comedy show? I thought it was some kind of religious program.
Its a floor wax
If anything, the variety sketch show is a *British* format. The Brits were doing this with the Goons and Spike Milligan on the radio. Morcambe and Wise was on the BBC when SNL started, as was The Two Ronnie's. They have a much richer heritage of this stuff than the US. They even invented Whose Line Is It Anyway? So the fact that the Brits would import this American format is bewildering.
Ok, so even in the UK we get obligatory POC in every sketch. The thing about comedy skits is it all starts with the writing. You can get away with mediocre writing if you have great comedy talent that can make up for it. But that's extremely rare.
Based on the skit shown, I can see why someone would think that was "Yank Comedy". Not the funny smart stuff you expect from the sophisticated brits. Or the vuglar "Naughty" humor you get from the more vulgar ones.
Morcambe and Wise was on the BBC when SNL started, as was The Two Ronnie's.
Way before SNL started; this one (featuring the Beatles) goes back to December, 1963.
My mother loved Benny Hill - I think it was just naughty enough to make her laugh, but not nasty or mean-spirited. She liked "The two ronnies" and "Are you being served?" too. I was more into Monty Python and Fawlty Towers.
The only brit comedy I hated was some guy called "Dave Thomas" - at least I think that was his name. He'd tell these long boring ass stories. Had a roommate who loved him. Without evidence, he claimed he was funny.
Larry David is funny if you get throughthe long boring setups. And overlook the 2nd rate supporting character actors.
Maybe they adopted it because of all the expats fleeing the fascism here in the states. They wanted a little piece of their unfunny bubble over there.
Fascism is always falling on america lands in europe
No (South) Asians in the cast?
The LIFE photo resembles recent Ellen DeGeneres.
You're thinking of "format" in a rather sterile, prefab way. Think of it as more spirit or ambience. What they're importing is more than a soulless physical blueprint or schematic. They're taking the atmosphere and everything else that goes with it.
In any case, a part of the format is the laugh track that comes after almost every line. Is it different from the usual British showbiz laughter? Does it steamroller through the sketch. Similarly, the yelling and funny faces at the end: does it take the cast and the viewers to a different place than British comedy -- even the lowbrow version -- usually goes? And the cheap sets, don't they create a different vibe? Even the lighting seems distinctive to SNL and ripped off from there.
The funny Brit: Dave Allen at Large
One of my all time faves (Actually Irish, not Brit)
Dave Thomas? The Canadian from SCTV? You may be thinking of Dave Allen, the guy who lost part of his finger. Irish, but achieved fame in the UK (via Australia).
The alleged token POC in the sketch is playing David Lammy, the Deputy Prime Minister. So can't really call the actor a token. CC, JSM
Maybe they'll do some skits about Englishmen calling Moslem pedophile rapists a rapist and being arrested for "Islamophobia".
Eric the Fruit Bat said...
"Ask me who is the Brit many Americans find most funny."
Jimmy Carr
There has been great comedy from the UK in the past, hopefully, they will find some for this show.
"Remember D-Day?"
Really?
Variety goes back to vaudeville. It was common on US TV in the fifties. We got British imports in the sixties and seventies when it was already in decline here. There's supposed to be a legacy of the old music hall in lowbrow British humor that distinguishes it from American. It's there, but hard to pin down, since vaudeville was international.
Wayne and Shuster, the Canadian comedy duo, deserve mention. They were old school schlocky comedians, but like midcentury cartoons, they were from a more literate era that recognized references to Shakespeare and other cultural icons. Before he became Lorne Michaels, SNL's creator hung out with the Shusters and married their daughter. Shuster's American cousin gave us another icon -- Superman.
I immediately noticed something that was exactly like America's SNL: everybody's total dependence on cue cards. Go watch any SNL clip from its first 20 years and you won't see that. People used to know their lines.
https://youtu.be/hh6R_pbAqjc?si=a4cZGegoNXCtJEtJ
I think I'd probably watch a rerun of Benny Hill or 'Who's Line Is It, Anyway?', or 'Are You Being Served?', before I would watch a current episode of 'SNL'. Not to mention 'SNL, Limey division'. Ugh. Is humor downstream of culture? Because British culture, right now, really sucks.
That was a sample of dave allen
Unflattering representation of Starmer. Shows him living up to the "coward" claim. Minimal bashing of Trump.
It wasn't especially funny but I agree with the message in the attempted humour.
Yeah, Dave Allen. Thanks.
I hated that Mofo.
I didn't actually hate him. I just hated having to listen to someone so Goddamn boring and unfunny. Orish Dave Allen rambling on with his stupid cigarette in hand. He could've had a drink too, but I might be mixing him up with someone else.
Anyway, he scarred me for life. Two roomates, one TV.
Craig Ferguson the Brit most Americans find funny?
Richard Lester was from Philadelphia, worked in the studio across the hall from Ernie Kovacs in early local TV. The Lester influence in British comedy comes from Kovacs.
The laugh track was awful. If it was live, which I doubt, they're well-trained seals.
Lammy was Foreign Secretary until Sept, but they kicked him upstairs to Lord Chancellor & Deputy PM. They're not going to make _him_ look stupid.
The Daily T (elegraph) podcasters do better Keir imitations. I don't know half the backgrounds, but it's still enjoyable.
Monty Python. 1968. Humor which has stood the test of time rather well. Social commentary in that humor which seems now predictive of the surreal decline of England, and the US, only decades too soon. Let's remember that the Ministry of Silly Walks and the findings of DOGE overlap to a great extent.
From the other clips, it almost looks like they cloned some of the SNL personalities: Jimmy Fallon, Kenan Thompson, Rachel Dratch, Tina Fey. But they are fresh faces with fresh accents (at least to us) and that makes them more interesting than the familiar idiots in the NYC cast. The big downer in the clips was seeing the (real) Tina Fey. Feh! Begone!
The New Statesman doesn't think the show will work in the UK:
All of which makes you wonder whether, for all our pretence of comic superiority, it is British tastes that have narrowed. In the 21st-century, our most acclaimed comedy has been artful, stylised, ironic – think Peep Show, The Office, Fleabag. We’ve developed a national allergy to anything with canned laughter, or sketch shows that close with grinning and dancing, or anything much like vaudeville and variety. But only a few decades ago, television was much hammier. On YouTube I recently came across a guest appearance Harold Wilson made on Morecambe and Wise in the late Seventies: he not only holds his own but seems to be enjoying himself. Programmes like that were part of a cheerful national culture that, without collective audiences or homogenous viewing, is unlikely to return. We think of America as unfathomably more riven and vast than Britain – but they, or at least the portion of their population that likes SNL, seem able to sustain something more like that now. You do start to wonder if the failure of SNL UK, and its absence until this point, might have more to do with the UK than SNL.
Yeah ferguson
Allen was devil may care like ferguson
"Ask me who is the Brit many Americans find most funny."
Benny Hill.
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Seconded.
I guess I will just have to be different. Rowan Atkinson as Mr. Bean.
30 Rock was Tina Fey's masterpiece. She will never create or write anything as good.
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