'Saturday Night Live' Officially Has a Weekend Update Problem the UK Already Solved

Published Sep 28, 2026, 4:24 PM EDT After more than four months, Saturday Night Live returned to NBC over the weekend with a relatively lukewarm premiere. Hosted by New York Knicks MVP Jalen Brunson, the Season 52 opener put Colin Jost and Michael Che back at the Weekend Update desk with plenty of material to cover, from President Donald Trump’s meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s address at the UN. While the longtime anchors joked about these news events, viewers were sharing clips of the franchise’s British version by Sunday morning, asking why the original didn’t hit quite as hard. That question becomes even tougher to dismiss now that both desks are covering the same news on the same weekend. Ania Magliano and Paddy Young of Saturday Night Live UK have given audiences something more revealing than just some comparison of who dared mention what. That contrast lets us see where each show directs its punchlines. And if last night’s episode is any indicator of the longstanding issues plaguing Weekend Update in the U.S., it’s not that Jost and Che avoid difficult stories — it’s that their younger (and often more criticized) sibling is making their choices look less sharp. ‘SNL’ Covers the Hard Stories, but Keeps Shifting the Punchline To give Jost and Che their due, they didn’t return from summer break determined to avoid anything political. In fact, Saturday night’s episode found Jost comparing Trump picking up the Chinese president at the airport like “a boyfriend with no job.” At the same time, Che joked that wherever Netanyahu goes, people end up “relocating” after delegates walked out of his UN address. It’s a sharp line and hardly the work of a desk afraid to mention Palestine. But Che immediately followed it by wondering aloud: “Now why’d I think that’d end in a laugh?” Suddenly, that awkwardness of telling the joke had become another joke. After last week’s viral SNL UK callout of Ed Sheeran and Robert Kraft garnered more than 2 million views on its respective socials, Jost and Che’s Weekend Update story on Macklemore offered an even clearer look at where their punchlines go. After the rapper was dropped from Sheeran’s tour, Che noted that the singer-songwriter would return for a Free Palestine tour. His response, though, was to ask whether Palestinians had “been through enough.” The joke is obvious here, but the target being Macklemore is eyebrow-raising. The people responsible for dropping him from the tour seem to be left out of the punchline completely. Jost and Che still have some pretty funny lines, with cast member Jeremy Culhane’s Tucker Carlson impression giving Update another lively stretch. But the issue is less about how many controversial names are put on a cue card and more about what they do once those names are on there. A joke can point at the people responsible, at someone tangled in a story, or back at the comedian who told the joke. And all three can get a laugh, but they don’t leave the same impression. That’s where the British desk becomes more than a point of comparison. ‘SNL UK’ Makes Evasion the Punchline Image via Sky/Matt Crockett; NBCUniversal Last week, SNL UK’s Weekend Update said the quiet part out loud, making the gap between what can and cannot be said part of the joke. By highlighting that Sheeran supports “causes that are allowed,” the series pointed out a hypocrisy real news anchors would avoid. This week, Magliano and Young pushed their sharp commentary further by deliberately staying quiet and making the omission itself a joke. Alongside a photograph of Netanyahu, Young says, “It’s easy to paint Benjamin Netanyahu as the bad guy in this situation...” There is an obvious second half to that sentence. We know the convention well enough to wait for the “but” — yet it never comes. Young moves straight to the next story, about the Chagos Islands, and the audience descends into hysterics. Weekend Update has trained its audience to expect the language of a real news broadcast, so when Young fails to complete that familiar structure, the omission takes on a new meaning. Crucially (and comparatively), Young doesn’t comment on the audience’s reaction. The laugh is huge, but he carries on with a smirk and a visible awareness of what he has just done. He does not turn the discomfort into a second joke — the line is allowed to remain linked to Netanyahu. Jost and Che make similar topical jokes in the U.S., but they often create distance from the subject afterwards by acknowledging how outrageous the SNL format itself is. SNL UK does not undermine its material in the same way. Magliano uses a similar technique as she begins to cover a story about the Liberal Democrats before quickly abandoning it. The audience understands her silence is insinuating that the political party is so irrelevant that she cannot be bothered to finish the thought. Similarly, her Sam Altman joke uses the same idea: “Altman, whose company launched ChatGPT, warned his creation could destroy humanity... And then he slapped his own wrist and ran out of the room, saying, ‘Somebody stop me.’” While SNL also joked about AI executives, Magliano used this absurd image to highlight evading responsibility. Altman is aware that AI could destroy humanity but behaves as though he’s powerless to do anything about it. Viewers Are Noticing Where ‘Weekend Update’ Points the Punchline Fans have started to loudly compare the two Weekend Update desks online. Whether this is due to a difference in comedic tastes between the two countries or something deeper, it's clear which one global audiences prefer. One viewer shared on X that “SNL UK is outshining SNL by being bolder and more relevant,” while another described the corresponding clips as an “incredible comparison on writing and delivering the same joke,” which has since garnered 1.7 million views. Another reaction focused specifically on the Ed Sheeran material: “How could you watch this entire Ed Sheeran thing play out and decide the smart thing to write would be a joke against Macklemore?” The comparison goes beyond boldness: viewers are identifying a difference in where the punchlines are pointed. The U.S. version sometimes uses the Weekend Update format to create distance from a controversial line, making Jost and Che’s performance part of the joke. Meanwhile​​​​​, SNL UK is happy to leave the discomfort attached to whoever or whatever is being satirized, even when the anchors themselves remain silent. Saturday Night Live airs Saturdays at 11:30 p.m. EST on NBC. Saturday Night Live UK returns to Sky with new episodes starting October 10, with an additional six episodes airing in early 2027. Both stream on Peacock the next day. Saturday Night Live Release Date October 11, 1975 Network NBC A famous guest host stars in parodies and sketches created by the cast of this witty show.