this post was submitted on 10 Apr 2025
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Every franchise dilutes the value of the brand. There’s rarely a good reason for this beyond “make more money.”
Sometimes, it works. The Office is a good example but it was a situation comedy re-contextualized for a different audience that wasn’t aware of the original.
A sketch comedy show can’t be treated the same way. You can’t transliterate the characters and jokes. So, it’s just going to be a format carbon copy with the name slapped on for no reason other than it’s recognizable. And, that means the name is expected to do some heavy lifting which doesn’t bode well.
Lorne Michaels has done multiple comedy shows for Canadian and US audiences. There’s no reason to believe that this version of SNL won’t be focused on the UK.
They likely aren’t bringing sketches from the US show over just like SNL didn’t do SCTV bits. The only constant I would expect is “Weekend Update” which is in the middle of the show and is topical news jokes. That bit will only work if it is centered on UK politics and culture.
Which I'm absolutely sure it will for at least 90% of it. I mean even US Weekend Update will make jokes about other countries' news sometimes.