When Sky CEO Dana Strong described “Saturday Night Live U.K.” as a “major investment in the U.K. comedy eco-system” at a showcase for the broadcaster last week, it turns out she wasn’t joking. Variety understands that each episode of the British adaptation is costing around £2 million ($2.6 million).
Variety has also learned that, unusually for a weekly entertainment production, “SNL U.K.” has hired the largest studio in central London’s Television Centre on a standing (exclusive) basis for the entirety of its eight-week run, meaning the cast and crew aren’t sharing the space with any other production. Nor will they need to disassemble sets and clear out of the offices, galleries, edit suites and storage spaces in between episodes. It’s a luxury few productions can afford these days as budgets are tightened.
The studio, the 10,800-square foot TC1, is usually home to “The Graham Norton Show”—as Norton himself pointed out during “SNL U.K.’s” inaugural episode, when he popped up during Fey’s opening monologue. His show is not set to return until the autumn.
It’s yet another sign of Sky’s faith in “SNL U.K.,” which was originally earmarked for only 6 episodes before a last-minute vote of confidence that saw it bumped up to 8 before the first episode had even been broadcast. At the Sky showcase five days before the inaugural episode aired, Strong described the show as “a point of pride for me” and “perhaps our most ambitious undertaking yet.”
While the show’s weekly budget still falls far short of its Stateside counterpart’s rumoured $4 million (£3 million) per episode, it’s a figure that is almost unheard of for a topical sketch show in the U.K., even one running to 75-minutes.
Insiders tell Variety that a typical British sketch show usually costs around £300-500,000 per episode, less than a quarter of “SNL U.K.’s” budget.
They pointed out it’s one of the reasons the sketch show format has become something of a dying art in the U.K. “They’re expensive, which is why no one does them anymore,” says one entertainment veteran. “Topical shows also have no repeatability, unlike dramas.”
As well as the exclusive studio hire for two months, a chunk of “SNL U.K.’s” budget will no doubt have gone on the 11-strong cast and team of 20 writers, not to mention the producing team, which includes “The Late Late Show With James Corden” vet James Longman as producer and “SNL” creator Lorne Michaels as exec producer, plus its numerous sets and costumes, many of which need to be produced with a tight turnaround as the writing team responds to current events.
The ratings for the inaugural episode, hosted by Tina Fey, drew a respectable 226,000 viewers and a mixed bag of reviews. Scott Bryan, reviewing the first episode for Variety, said it risks being “too American” for a British audience but even where a sketch doesn’t always work “there’s enough one-liners to keep you going.”
Online, and particularly YouTube, where “SNL” skits tend to have their most successful half-life, Fey’s opening monologue attracted over 1.6 million views in less than 48 hours, followed by the Keir Starmer cold open with 1 million views.
Sky will no doubt now be waiting to see what the viewing figures look like next weekend, when “Fifty Shades” star Jamie Dornan takes over hosting duties from Fey, to see if their £16 million investment has been worth it.
Comcast-owned network Sky, which is producing and broadcasting the series in the U.K., declined to comment.
