226,000 viewers is a good figure for Sky

Saturday Night Live UK debuted to 226,000 viewers last night.

It’s a strong showing for a Sky One show, with the subscription broadcaster beating Channel 4 in the 10pm shot. The terrestrial channel was broadcasting Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation to 215,000 people.

According to official Barb figures supplied by overnights.tv and reported by Deadline, the SNL audience represented 3.2 per cent of all viewers at the time.  

It is also almost four times the size of the audience who watch Sky’s comedy sports quiz A League of Their Own, which attracted 60,000 for its last season.

Sky is also likely to depend on metrics other than just overnight figures to determine whether the expensive SNL UK venture has been a hit.

As well as catch-up viewing, it needs programmes to be loved enough to drive subscriber numbers, and will also be looking to see how clips fare online.

Tina Fey’s opening monologue from last night’s show – featuring surprise appearances from Nicola Coughlan, Michael Cera and Graham Norton – has attracted 368,000 views on YouTube and 582,000 on TikTok overnight.

A clip of the ‘cold open’ sketch about Sir Keir Starmer has attracted 1.3million views on the student-run PoliticsUK X channel (but just 86,000 on the official Sky Channel) 

The US version of SNL typically gets around 4.3million viewers in America, despite going out at 11.30pm,  but  only around 5,000 viewers on Sky Comedy here.

Saturday Night Live UK stars Hammed Animashaun, Ayoade Bamgboye, Larry Dean, Celeste Dring, George Fouracres, Ania Magliano, Annabel Marlow, Al Nash, Jack Shep, Emma Sidi and Paddy Young.

Jonno Johnson leads a writing team comprising Charlie Skelton, Celya AB, Omar Badawy, Gráinne Maguire, Laura Claxton, Chris Cantrill, James Farmer, Humphrey Ker, Omodara Olatunji, Joseph Moore, Lorna Rose Treen, Hari Kanth, Louis Waymouth, Keith Akushie, Bella Hull, Ayo Adenekan, Nathan Foad, Al Roberts, Ellie Fulcher.

Published: 22 Mar 2026