Whether it’s a giant crab at the Traitors roundtable, a hilarious Princess Diana impression or an arm-flailing Keir Starmer, Saturday Night Live UK has delivered all sorts of bizarre sights to our screens over the past eight weeks – and there’s still one final show to go.
While comedy fans were trepidatious ahead of the series, which is the first ever British version of the long-running US version, the cast and crew have successfully put their own spin on a 50-year format. They’ve also impressed the Sky bosses enough to be commissioned for an encore, with series two set to air in the autumn.
Sketch shows may be notoriously hit-and-miss, but we’ve collated the biggest hits to come from SNL UK’s debut series. Read on to see if you agree with our ranking.
12. Who Wants to Remain a Millionaire?
SNL UK’s “cold opens” have made headlines for their skewering of Prime Minister Keir Starmer, gloriously sent up by George Fouracres. All flailing arms and soulless phrasing (“it is clear to me now”), the first saw SNL’s Starmer scared to speak to Donald Trump on the phone, with the IRL president later sharing the sketch on his platforms. But one of the most effective sent Starmer onto “Who Wants to Remain a Millionaire?”, with the PM stumped by the question “Is it ever a good idea to give Peter Mandelson a job?” He cycled through his lifelines, phoning a friend (that friend being, of course, Mandelson), before coming up with what is “clear to me now, was the wrong decision”. The sketch was simple but devastatingly effective, portraying Starmer as a clueless ditherer who couldn’t see the obvious even when it stared him in the face. Jessie Thompson
11. Pirate Radio
Imagine a throwback to a Nineties-style pirate radio station, where no one is allowed to have a normal conversation and all contributions have to be shouted or rapped over the bleeps and bloops of the music. Except all these contributions are about the humdrum daily problems of the middle-aged. This sketch saw Riz Ahmed play “Dr Rishi”, trying and failing to get across his serious information about prostate cancer awareness while Ayoade Bamgboye and co shouted things like “shout out to Jane, the divorce is final… she’s back on the pill!” It featured one of my favourite lines from the series – Bamgboye shouting: “Tony in Streatham just put his dog down! Prayers up for the poodle!” JT
10. Scrimpch
A star was born during SNL UK’s penultimate show, and his name is Scrimpch. Jack Shep’s excessively hairy dating correspondent stopped by the Weekend Update desk to deliver love life advice because, in his words, he’s been on seven dates and he’s probably going to go on more. Scrimpch keeps breaking into song and dresses like a Seventies porn star, but he’s a poet – blessing us with lyrics like, “Can I guess your BMI? It doesn’t matter if it’s low or high.” Shep is electric as this ambiguously European casanova who can’t stop saying his own name and won’t stop making me laugh (even the brilliant Ania Magliano and Shep himself corpse in the presence of Scrimpch). We may not know where exactly Scrimpch comes from (”I came here from Europe on a school trip and they forgot me”), but what we do know is that we need more of him. Lauren Morris
9. British Pork
The best SNL UK sketches have one thing in common: they all star George Fouracres, who I have found myself falling a little bit in love with across the series. There’s an intensity and a surrealism to his performances, and a total lack of vanity in his commitment to the gag. This sketch parodied a real-life – deeply sinister – TV advert for pork from the 1980s, with Fouracres playing an actor playing the husband of a family sitting down for dinner, his wife played by guest host Aimee Lou Wood. But the director of the advert had feedback: the British pork board wanted to go in “a more frightening direction”. In the corner of the room three senior bods covered in bacon glowered over proceedings, and Fouracres struggled to keep a straight face as he delivered lines about the value of pork to camera with a “dark rage”. JT
8. Jools Holland daylight savings
A great SNL episode traditionally mixes the topical with the evergreen. With an episode airing the night clocks went forward, the writers crafted a pre-recorded sketch that was timely in the most literal way. Beneath the cool colour palette and screeching orchestration of a ghost movie, a wide-eyed girl (Annabel Marlow) warned her father (guest host Jamie Dornan) that he must remember to change the clocks, “or else he’ll get us”. The lights flickered, and in burst a vampiric Jools Holland (Fouracres), creepily roaming around the house in search of “his hour”. Unsurprisingly, Fouracres – continuing his reign as the MVP of the season – did a spot-on Holland impersonation, but it was the bizarre and unpredictable premise that set this one apart. If I think of this every Daylight Saving Time for the rest of my life, I won’t even be mad. Isobel Lewis
7. 45 Seconds with Fouracres
If the surreal fever dream that was Bob Mortimer and Vic Reeves’s Shooting Stars ever returned, it would almost certainly air something like “45 Seconds with Fouracres”. The recurring SNL UK skit sees scene-stealer Fouracres go solo, wearing a Hugh Hefner-esque robe and intensely launching into song in a bit that completely ignores the time limit in its title. The sketch’s inaugural outing – in which a rambunctious Fouracres wanted to know exactly “what kind of Irish” your grandad is – became one of the show’s first viral sensations thanks to his impressive yet unintelligible impressions of Irish dialects. With a frenzied Fouracres switching from an aggressive Dublin dweller to a nostalgic Northern Irish OAP at break-neck speed before belting out a traditional Irish rebel song with guest Nicola Coughlan, it’s impossible to take your eyes off of him. That’s down to his bizarrely hilarious performance but also partly out of fear – who knows what this wide-eyed maniac will do next? LM
6. Mastermind
When contemplating what your Mastermind subject would be, it’s tempting to say something that makes you sound erudite, like “1950s kitchen-sink dramas” or “the novels of Virginia Woolf”. But in truth, you might do better with something like “things my mum has told me about people I’ve never met and have no connection to”, as Jack Whitehall’s “man who does something in IT” found in this very funny sketch. Questions posed by Clive Myrie, played with hilarious attention to detail by Hammed Animashaun, included: “Why does Linda from Pilates have an extra wheelie bin?”, “Who died last week?” and “What noise has Mary and Martin’s air fryer started making?” It was a spot on send-up of the military dedication to social minutiae by certain British mums. JT
5. From the coward in Mykonos to the hero in Luton
Don’t you hate it when fragile masculinity ruins your holiday and also your entire life? That was the unfortunate fallout in this brilliant sketch about a man, played by Fouracres, who drugged some pilots on the flight home from Mykonos because he wanted to win back the respect of his wife. He hadn’t found the courage to complain about being ripped off in a restaurant despite her insisting he did so, so he thought… flying a plane (??) might repair the damage to his ego. Nicola Coughlan’s panicked flight attendant discovered the only passengers who thought they could save the day were male, with misguided but over-confident justifications including “I literally just watched Top Gun Maverick”, “I’m actually really comfortable driving in France?” and, my favourite, “I got my wife pregnant, like, first go.” Was the man’s wife impressed? Yes. Could he fly the plane? No. Patriarchy hurts everyone, guys! JT
4. DadSwap
Got daddy issues? One of the SNL UK writers certainly does – as evidenced by this chuckle-worthy parody of a dating app ad. Aimed at adults who struggle to connect with their fathers (“the train wifi of people”), DadSwap promises to set them up with a new and improved parent. However, the app’s increasingly exasperated founder (played by Fouracres) quickly discovers that “here’s your father” becomes “how’s your father” for some of the sexually frustrated pairings. “It’s not illegal,” one of the app’s users, whose new dad became her new boyfriend, repeatedly says while winking at the audience. A spot-on satire of dating app culture, DadSwap is one of SNL UK’s finest – and possibly in danger of being acquired by Meta. LM
3. Undérage
SNL UK faced a myriad of challenges in its first episode. How did it prove the haters wrong – particularly those who predicted the show would be “too American” – while asserting a clear tone of voice? The answer was simple: a parody beauty advert about an anti-aging face cream so effective it makes people think the user’s partner is a paedophile. The pre-recorded sketch featured all the trappings of a skincare commercial, from women dressed in white touching their glowing skin to vague scientific diagrams and references to hyaluronic acid. The women beamed at the camera, while their boyfriends and husbands were “hunted by right-wing paedophile catching militias”. “She's my wife! She's a grown woman!” shouted Paddy Young, as he was wrestled to the floor by a police officer. It was an instant, effective marker of just how close to the bone SNL UK was prepared to go. IL
2. Mario and Peach
Imagining Mario as a schlubby Italian plumber and Princess Peach as his loud-mouthed New Yorker wife, this video game-themed sketch was rich in every sense. A treasure trove of Nintendo paraphernalia littered the apartment set – the sofa strewn with star coin cushions, mystery boxes by the toaster, mushroom posters taped to the wall. Fouracres brought a dishevelled grit to his Mario, but it was guest host Aimee Lou Wood as the gum-chewing princess who really stole the show. Because yes, pop culture references and cameos are heaps of fun, but IP alone can’t make a sketch great. Through the stars’ committed performances, this sketch made a silly skewering of a classic children’s character read like a totally believable domestic drama. “I live in Brooklyn. The couple upstairs argue like this. This was accurate,” reads the most liked YouTube comment. That, frankly, tells you everything you need to know. IL
1. Great Big Crab Man
We knew at some point SNL UK would parody The Traitors – not doing so would be a cultural crime (carrying the sentence of a night in the turret with a windy Celia Imrie). What was in doubt was whether their send-up of the Scottish castle would actually be funny, and thankfully, the cast and celebrity host Riz Ahmed delivered. The skit sees Emma Sidi’s generic bolshy contestant tell the remaining contestants that she suspects Imran (Ahmed) of being a “great big crab man”, while a bright-red human-sized crustacean sits on her left. “I know I was wrong about Kaya, Mehul and Ife but I have a feeling I just can’t shake,” she tells the innocent Imran. A tongue-in-cheek satire of The Traitors’ unconscious bias problem that sees people of colour eliminated first, “Great Big Crab Man” hits all the right beats – from the misspelled chalkboard names (“Enron”, “Aslan”) to Celeste Dring’s spot-on Claudia Winkleman. LM
Bafta-nominated BBC comedy axed after just one series
Andy Serkis explains Aragorn’s name change in LOTR prequel after Mortensen recast
The ultimate power move Aimee Lou Wood pulled after SNL’s brutal jokes
SNL UK’s Jack Shep: ‘Lads shouted Diana at me in the street – it was hot’
Kelly Reilly and Cole Hauser on Yellowstone, raunch and rivalry
Amandaland is good – but here’s why Anneland could be even better
