Here, have some more Saturday Night Live UK discourse.

Here’s another two cents to add to the bulging wallet of SNL discourse.

The US show is legendarily hit and miss but it’s a formidable incubator of writing and performing talent. Like many, I raised an eyebrow when the UK version was announced, concerned that it would succumb to the economic risk aversion (particularly around talent) that has seen most forms of comedy decline on British screens, and that the institutional status of the brand itself could be used as a stick to beat British comedy itself more broadly. (Nicola Coughlan’s monologue line about British people rooting for the failure of others is particularly acute in comedy, a genre that produces an unhinged response in many commentators).

The cast announcement felt like a game-changer. Calling the performers “newcomers” is only half the picture; almost all have built up formidable reputations on the live circuit, honing their craft in fields almost entirely absent from our TV screens like sketch and improv. The writer’s room is absolutely stacked with talent.

We have a thriving comedy ecosystem in the UK, in heartening defiance of crumbling arts investment and closing live venues. That we had the talent to pull off a UK SNL was never in doubt; the question was whether a broadcaster would take a punt on bringing that talent to the TV audience. It’s no shade on Last One Laughing - one of the decade’s funniest shows - to point out that it could have been made ten years earlier with many of the same cast.

The opening episode of SNL UK was a triumph - and you can feel the cathartic excitement that its creative success and respectable numbers have unleashed. In my article for The Fence about the death of the panel show, I wrote that one of the reasons to mourn this largely unloved format was that it closed a tried and trusted route from the live circuit to our living rooms. We might now have a better one.