Yes, it was a risk, but Saturday Night Live UK was much better than it had any right to be

A TV producer, a streaming executive and a group of stand-up comics walk into a bar.

“Let’s transplant a much-loved satirical sketch comedy from one country to another, replace the entire cast with unknowns, try and make jokes about Sir Keir Starmer, one of the world’s least funny men, and then show it in Australia,” says the streaming executive to the others.

“HAHAHAHAHAHA,” they reply.

That’s the joke: there are so many reasons not to try and re-create Saturday Night Live in London and then pray for ratings in Australia that, quite sensibly, they used it as one of the gags in host Tina Fey’s opening monologue. It was whittled in to a topical jab as well – why do a British version? “Like so many large-scale US operations these days,” Fey deadpanned, “no one really knows.”

That quaver of self-doubt and Brit self-deprecation ran through the whole show, and it was the right tack to take. First, it was a reminder that however hallowed Saturday Night Live is in the US, it is not unimpeachable. Ask AI, “What’s not as funny as it used to be?” and your first two answers will be The Simpsons and SNL.

But second, SNL UK was right to come in all bashful because sketch comedy itself has always been a mixed bag. Go and watch Monty Python, Fast Forward, The Comedy Company or any of the classics of the genre, and you’ll find as many damp squibs as bangers. The fact then that SNL UK comes with SNL branding, plenty of hullabaloo, a willing audience expecting the wit of Have I Got News For You, but zero real reason to exist means it is a sitting duck. I did it myself in the cold open, turning to my wife and pronouncing a sketch set in 10 Downing Street in which Keir Starmer was dithery about phoning Trump, “Lame”.

Even that sketch, however, got in a few sharp lines before the performers turned to camera and shouted, “Live from London, It’s Saturday Night!” and from then on, Saturday Night Live UK was much better than it had any right to be. They threw absolutely everything at it – not just star power in the form of Tina Fey, once an SNL head writer, now a bona fide comedy heavyweight, but also every type of humour you could care to think of, as well as film parodies, celebrity cameos, two performances from ironic style-rockers Wet Leg and, of course, a British take on the famed Weekend Update segment, which in the US has been hosted for years by Michael Che and Scarlett Johanssen’s husband, Colin Jost.

Weekend Update was probably the most weakened update here, probably because UK hosts Ania Magliano and Paddy Young tried too hard to mimic Che and Jost’s “Did I really just say that?” style. Britain has a much stronger, longer satirical tradition than the US, and some barbed Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor quips suggested they were going to go for the jugular here, but the amount of mugging to camera from the hosts implied they knew the material couldn’t quite stand on its own.

That said, topical comedy, often written minutes before broadcast to try and bounce off the rope-a-dope news cycle, is the hardest material of all. By the time Weekend Update is broadcast here on Monday, it will no longer be the weekend, which adds a further quizzical “huh” to some of the punchlines.

But if timely jokes are tough when global media staggers live broadcasts, it meant the more timeless sketches could really prosper. We’ll have to wait and see whether they can sustain the quality week in, week out, but the hit ratio on skits was impressively high.

A first parody of a skincare cream called “Underagé” was bang on the money: scabrous humour with a satirical edge. The show also put trust in its performers, almost all of whom will be unknown to Australian audiences. Several sketches relied on silly dances, daft songs, funny faces and yarra costumes. (Jack Shep batting his eyelids demurely as Princess Di was a straight-to-meme moment.)

In this, SNL UK reached in to the British comedy tradition of absurdist pratting around – and it worked. Michael Fouracres capped the show with a superbly stupid song about the various types of Irish grandpa one might have, and it served to underline the kind of things SNL US doesn’t do. Whatever else it is, that show always tries to be cool. SNL UK didn’t give a hoot.

Broadly, it was a hoot. It is entirely possible they have front-loaded the new series with the best sketches that have been sitting in foolscap suspension files across Britain for the past few years, and that therefore next week’s episode will tank. They’ll struggle to keep getting hosts of the quality of Fey, as well as cameos of the quality (and quantity) of Nicola Coughlan, Regé-Jean Page, Graham Norton and Michael Cera.

But the cast appear to be the real find here. That you don’t yet know the names of Hammed Animashaun, George Fouracres, Ayoade Bamgboye, Larry Dean, Celeste Dring and Emma Sidi turns out to be SNL UK’s strongest suit. Jokes good and bad come along all the time, but people who make you laugh are rare indeed.