‘SNL UK’ Has Found a Way To Make ‘Saturday Night Live’s Biggest Problem Work

Published Oct 31, 2026, 4:38 PM EDT Greer Riddell is a London-based culture journalist and critic writing on film, television, audience behaviour, and the wider media industry. She is a Writer and Social Media Coordinator at Collider and TV Editor at FILMHOUNDS. Her recent collaborations include Netflix, Warner Bros., DC Studios, Hulu, and Disney+, producing features on titles including Saturday Night Live UK, Severance, Sitcoms, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and Stranger Things. Her recent reviews include Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man, Stranger Things: Tales From ‘85’, Scrubs Season 10, and The Boroughs. Her work has also included coverage of UK film festivals and features published in Film Stories Magazine. Saturday Night Live UK has a problem that most television series would struggle to turn into an advantage — it only knows how it will begin two days before broadcast. Speaking during The SNL UK Masterclass, part of the Edinburgh TV Festival 2026’s Funny Business strand supported earlier this summer by Universal Studios Group, co-head writer Jonno Johnson and cast member Emma Sidi described a process in which scripts can change almost until broadcast. Yet the UK version of Saturday Night Live has found a way to make that pressure work in its favor. The American series has spent decades turning breaking news into last-minute comedy, and its British counterpart is discovering just how much that unpredictability can work in its favor. How ‘SNL UK’s Last-Minute Cold Opens Keep ‘Saturday Night Live’ Topical For Saturday Night Live UK, the cold open must establish the episode's tone while responding to stories that may have developed only days earlier, which is their biggest challenge. Johnson explained at the Edinburgh TV Festival that a small group of writers writes the cold open, usually starting Thursday evening. “We want it to be as relevant as possible,” he said. Blocking is then scheduled for 8 p.m. on Friday, and the cue cards must be ready three hours earlier, leaving little room for second thoughts, extensive rewrites, or rehearsals. The advantage of the compressed schedule is that it reduces the distance between the news and the joke. The immediacy of the Saturday Night Live format usually means the series takes the risk of commenting on something so fresh and in return gets the first and biggest laughs. Johnson described the moment when a cold open begins to take shape as “one of the biggest moments of, like, what on earth are we doing here?” He explained, “You'll have nothing at all, and then somebody will say something, and you just suddenly have to go, ‘I guess it's that then,’ and then you just start going.” The SNL writers are at the mercy of the news cycle, with some weeks providing excellent cold open fodder such as Prince Harry and Meghan moving back to the United Kingdom or Ed Sheeran’s tour unraveling due to his comments on Palestine. Other weeks it is not so clear-cut. Cynthia Erivo’s Season 2, Episode 6, chose to include Prince William starring on The Graham Norton Show in its cold open, which was only broadcast the previous evening. SNL UK Lead Producer James Longman singles out Season 1’s Melania Trump cold open at the Edinburgh TV Festival. Sidi recalled that she was told she would be playing Trump after the idea had already been written and the broadcast only a day away. “And then they were like, ‘Right upstairs, Emma's playing Melania.’ And we were like, ‘Great, it's tomorrow. The show's tomorrow,’” she remembered. The sketch followed a press conference in which Trump addressed her connection to Jeffrey Epstein, providing the writers with a timely subject at a point where the team had not found much else to build the opening around. Longman did have to coordinate with the American Saturday Night Live team, who were also working on a Melania-related cold open that same night: “I spoke to [them], I said, ‘We're going to do Melania, is that all right?’ And they were like, ‘Of course you can do Melania.’” Why 'SNL UK’s Last-Minute Cold Opens Thrive on Risk Producing a cold open at such short notice also changes how the writers work and how the cast approaches performing live. At the Edinburgh TV Festival, Johnson compared the production process to “pulling off a heist”, explaining that the team has to make quick decisions and commit to them. That willingness to take risks extends to the cast. While speaking to Collider ahead of Season 2’s premiere, Sidi described the experience as terrifying, while Ayoade Bamgboye called it “electric.” Bamgboye led Season 1, Episode 7’s cold open as Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch. She was also joined by guest star Peter Serafinowicz as Reform UK leader Nigel Farage. This marked the first time both politicians were impersonated on SNL UK. Jack Shep described the pressure of the series at the Edinburgh TV Festival, recalling going home and telling his boyfriend, “I'm really stressed,” before bursting into tears. Once the day arrived, however, he found himself “flying through it because it's just so like balls to the wall and it's so busy.” The result is that Saturday Night Live UK is better precisely because it has so little time to prepare. The team must write, rehearse and stage the material just days before broadcast, responding to news stories while they are still fresh in the audience’s minds. What might seem like the show’s biggest production problem becomes one of its greatest creative strengths, giving the cold opens their urgency, unpredictability, and excitement all round. Saturday Night Live UK Season 2 Part 2 returns on Sky One in the UK in January 2027 and streams the next day on Peacock in the U.S.