Loran Mullan's series on the Sky remake of a US institution

Having discussed how Saturday Night Live’s sketches might be adapted for the British remake yesterday, Lorcan Mullan now turns his attention to the hosts…

Sky’s announcement of a British Saturday Night Live promised a ‘star-studded’ line-up of hosts. I worry that the definition of ‘star’ starts to change after a few episodes in the same way that my meals become looser and looser definitions of ‘healthy’ the further we go into the new year.

For at least the first few weeks of SNL UK’s existence, they will certainly have high-profile names all geared up to be front-and-centre of the show that will be the talk of the UK TV industry. My guess is Tom Hiddleston will be well up for it. He always seems to be.

It will be interesting to see how many weeks of hosts they will announce ahead of time. There’s always the chance that we could see another "scheduling conflict’ like the one saw Mel & Sue drop out of their week of hosting ITV’s much-panned The Nightly Show

I’m reminded of a moment involving David Mitchell in an episode of 10 O’Clock Live during its third and final series. Mitchell must have hoped he’d follow in the footsteps of Jon Stewart when he signed on for this extremely hyped up show and frequently interview high-profile figures with a combination of journalistic probity and his natural wit.  Indeed, he started with Cabinet Ministers, but by series 3 he was refereeing a shouting match between Janet Street-Porter and Peter Stringfellow.

If the rumours are confirmed and James Longman signs on as the show’s producer, his Late Late Show collaborator James Corden will probably be one of the first hosts. Regardless of your feelings of Corden, his theatrical and comedy background means he’ll probably do a good job and, if the show is a success, might be a regular host in the same way that Alec Baldwin and Steve Martin have been for years in the US.

I expect a number of Sky-employed comedians like Romesh Ranganathan, Rob Beckett, and John Bishop to be asked to host. It might be a good idea to have someone from Sky’s current biggest original hits Brassic or Gangs of London for a useful early cross-promotion.

The rotating host format is something that’s been tried several times in the UK, with the only success coming from Have I Got News For You. The difference between that and the failures are that it was a well-established show with the panel captains Paul Merton and Ian Hislop, the main source of the humour, remaining in their position.

The aforementioned Nightly Show was the latest futile attempts to copy the late weeknight chat show format that had previously not worked on Channel 5 with Jack Doherty, nor on Channel 4 with Graham Norton. ITV’s idea of rotating guests was the hat on a hat of big mistakes because it meant he show literally had no hook for a viewer to want to come back if they’d enjoyed a particular host after their week was finished.

Channel 4’s two attempts at the guest host format were The Friday/Sunday Night Project. The kind of big names they could attract had usually peaked in their relevancy five to ten years earlier, if that. Some of the most ‘star-studded’ names they could book as hosts included Brigitte Nielsen, Sadie Frost, Christian Slater, and Steven Seagal. A reminder, this show aired from 2005 to 2009 in prime time on a terrestrial channel, in the days before social media and streaming were competing with TV w for people’s attention.

Despite this, Channel 4 took another crack with Host The Week a few years ago. The big name they attracted for the one and only episode aired? Scarlett Moffatt.

SNL UK producers will struggle to convince talent reps that their bigger names spending a week preparing and hosting a late-night show on a non-terrestrial channel will be a wise investment of their limited promotional time for their latest release. So maybe Sky should have been a bit more reserved with the hype they put behind this aspect of the show in their press release.

Advice for the producers: Don’t make the hosts the main selling point of the show and don’t feel you have to cultivate the whole episode around showcasing them. As I advised yesterday, have sketches that the host doesn’t have to appear in and doesn’t have to have their approval for it to be included in the episode. If the show becomes a hit you’ll have agents banging at the door all day to get their client on the show, but that’s only if it’s a hit.

One of the wisest decisions Lorne Michaels made in the first few seasons was making sure that most of their hosts were people that would thrive in a live environment, usually with a lot of experience in comedy. Early hosts like George Carlin, Richard Pryor, Robert Klein, Lily Tomlin, Peter Cook, Dudley Moore, Eric Idle, and Madeline Kahn all had the chops to match the energy of the regular ensemble.

Therefore, until the show is a confirmed hit with the public they should hire comedians, or actors with a comedic background, to host as often as possible. A stand-up will also be worth five to ten minutes of the show with just their opening monologue. 

Hire almost anyone who was in any series of Taskmaster, because I think the qualities you need for a good SNL UK host and a good contestant on Taskmaster probably overlap a lot. However, Greg Davies and Alex Horne should be forced to co-host together and never be allowed to host on their own.

Some home-grown actors with no SNL hosting experience who I think would be good choices include Steve Coogan, Stephen Graham, Michelle Keegan, and Olivia Colman. If they insist on trying out at least a few people not known as performers (but who hopefully won’t turn into the country’s authoritarian leader at a later date), I would suggest giving a chance to a gregarious personality like Micah Richards or Alison Hammond.

I’d also suggest, if the timetables can work, at least one member of the SNL US cast to host an episode as part of an exchange programme. Kenan Thompson would be the obvious candidate.

But never forget this: the host will only be there for one episode. The cast will be there every week.

A four-part guide to making sure the British SNL isn't a flop

Part 1: The sketches
Part 2: The hosts (this article)
Part 3: The cast
Part 4: The expectations

@ Lorcan Mullan is @lorcanmullan on X and BlueSky

Published: 18 Apr 2025