Saturday Night Live UK Turns Its Sketches on Two Familiar Faces
Saturday Night Live UK's latest cold open, the comedy sketch that runs before the title sequence, poked fun at Prime Minister Andy Burnham and Prince William. Variety reported the sketch was built around both men's recent TV turns.
George Fouracres played Burnham, and Emma Sidi played Liverpool Mayor Steven Rotheram. The sketch depicted Burnham's appearance on Celebrity Gogglebox, the celebrity edition of the reality show where famous faces watch television and react to it. The Burnham episode was a special edition in aid of Stand Up To Cancer, a charity that raises money for cancer research, according to the Daily Mail. Paddy Young, who hosts the show's news-parody segment Weekend Update, played a version of Burnham from the future.
The sketch also mocked Prince William's appearance on The Graham Norton Show. He made a surprise visit to an Earthshot Prize edition of the chat show, as Yahoo reported. Freddie Meredith played the prince, and Jack Shep played the host, Norton. The real appearance covered two topics the sketch picked up on: William's love of Christopher Nolan films and The Celebrity Traitors, a reality game show in which celebrities try to deceive each other.
That show got its own send-up in the same cold open. Celeste Dring played host Claudia Winkleman. A second parody targeted The Great British Bake Off, with Larry Dean as Noel Fielding and Ayoade Bamgboye as Alison Hammond.
The show has leaned on political and celebrity targets before. James Austin Johnson co-starred in a cold open on 17 October alongside a fictional Burnham, according to NBC Insider. The same report said Johnson also played Donald Trump in an SNL UK sketch.
The series itself has a future on UK screens. Deadline reported in May that Saturday Night Live UK had been renewed for a second season at Sky, meaning the broadcaster had ordered more episodes. Renewal is the step that keeps a show going after its first run, and it is the reason a sketch like this one can be made at all. Each week's cold open needs writers, performers and a studio crew to pull it off, and a renewal is what keeps those jobs in place.
The cold open is a short piece of the show, but it is the part that makes the news pages most often. This week, it turned a prime minister's TV night and a prince's chat-show appearance into a few minutes of parody.
