Saturday Night Live UK to Screen Monday Nights on Sky Comedy

Season two of Saturday Night Live UK will premiere next month on Sky Comedy.

It will air 8.30 Mondays from September 14, with an encore broadcast on Saturdays at 9.30.

S1 of the SNL spin-off didn’t screen here but Sky plans to air S2 within days of its UK transmission.

It will run in two blocks: the first will be for six weeks, starting September 12 on Sky UK; the second block will debut early next year.

Returning are cast members Hammed Animashaun, Ayoade Bamgboye, Larry Dean, Celeste Dring, George Fouracres, Ania Magliano, Annabel Marlow, Al Nash, Jack Shep, Emma Sidi and Paddy Young.

Here’s the trailer.

No word on guest hosts as of yet; S1’s included Tina Fey, Hannah Waddingham, Jamie Dornan, Riz Ahmed, Jack Whitehall and Nicola Coughlan.

S1 reviews were mixed: “It could have been a lot worse” (The Guardian); “darker and more surreal than its US counterpart” (Variety); “shockingly competent” (The Telegraph); “the spark is not there yet” (The Times).

Deadline reported “early viewing data” for the first month was “encouraging, if not faultless”. According to its analysis:

SNL UK has stormed past 86M views across its official online accounts on YouTube, Instagram Reels, X/Twitter, and TikTok, meaning it is consistently going viral, even without counting bootlegged videos on unaffiliated SNLaccounts. Instagram Reels is proving to be fertile ground …

The noise SNL is making online will please Sky, which is using the show to market the pay-TV platform to new subscribers. But online views are unlikely to translate into meaningful revenue for the Comcast-owned company, according to industry sources, and there is no evidence that the series is providing a big boost for Sky’s streaming service NOW.

Full SNL episodes are not even registering in online viewing reports from overnights.tv, suggesting that the NOW streaming figures are so low, they are negligible.

Deadline noted S1 started strongly in the linear ratings but “suffered steep declines in viewing” — although it grew “its audience among 25-34 year olds, a demographic that roughly mirrors the age of the show’s cast”.