Creative team rejigged as first six episodes set for September launch
Series two of Sky’s breakout live comedy import Saturday Night Live UK will return to screens on 12 September.
The 12-episode run will be split in half with the first six episodes to air this year, while the latter half will broadcast in 2027.
The debut, which aired earlier this year, spanned eight episodes, drawing a crowd of 627,000 (7.5%) for Sky One after 28 days to its launch episode, leagues ahead of the 79,000 (0.9%) benchmark for its 10pm slot Saturday night slot.
The second series of SNL will welcome back all 11 members of the inaugural cast: Hammed Animashaun, Ayoade Bamgboye, Larry Dean, Celeste Dring, George Fouracres, Ania Magliano, Annabel Marlow, Al Nash, Jack Shep, Emma Sidi and Paddy Young.
Broadcast live each week, a different celebrity host and musical guest will join the cast for topical sketches, live performances and a British take on the classic Weekend Update segment.
The first half of the second series will run between 12 September and 24 October.
S1 creatives promoted
For the second series, Laura Claxton has been promoted to co-head writer, joining head writer Jonno Johnson. Liz Clare returns as director and Heather MacVean joins as costume designer. BBC Studios’ Sinead Oldnall has made the jump to SNL to head up the UK talent team as director of onscreen talent.
Saturday Night Live UK is produced by Universal Television Alternative Studio’s UK production team and Broadway Video for Sky and Now. Lorne Michaels serves as exec producer and James Longman is lead producer.
The series was commissioned by Phil-Edgar Jones, the executive director of unscripted originals at Sky and for series 2, Alex Moody who is head of comedy commissioning at Sky and Cecile Frot-Coutaz who is chief executive of Sky Studios and chief content officer for Sky.
In an exclusive interview with Broadcast earlier this year, Edgar-Jones said the plan was to keep building SNL UK on Sky without having it “spoiled by over-scheduling”.
“SNL UK is a little gem, a little jewel. The mantra is: don’t fuck it up,” he said.
This article was originally posted on our sister site, www.broadcastnow.co.uk.