(Image: Shutterstock/BrAt82)

I am old enough to remember (fondly) the Saturday Live show on Channel 4 that Ben Elton hosted in the late 80’s, which was in a way a rip off, of the American Saturday Night Live which made stars of Chevy Chase, Dan Ackroyd and the sadly departed John Belushi. I’ve also said for long enough that the UK deserves a good Saturday evening of entertainment, comedy and music. It’s what advertisers want too, with higher rating shows building brands and the economy. Money make the world go round, right?

Saturday Night Live launched with much fanfare at the weekend and has had some mixed reviews. Even the current President of the USA had something to tweet about on his Truth Social pages. Which means you must be doing something right, although according to the critics of the Broadsheets it was only 3 stars entertainment, with even Nicola Coughlan saying that the British “tend to root for the failure of others.”

It’s a promising start and the type of show advertisers and media agencies have been crying out for at the weekend. With all due respect, it has to be better than The Masked Singer, right? Overnight viewing figures of 226,000 with a 3.2% audience share (Source: BARB) and 700,000 YouTube views of Tina Fey’s monologue shows a good start. With word of mouth and catch up impacts to follow, we could have a show that we can all buy into on a Saturday night again. Critic feed from the BBC is here so you can read what the people who write about stuff think too.

Credit: Sean Japp, Director