Saturday Night Live

1970s tv comedy series

Iconic American sketch show that for last over 40 years is broadcasted live from New York studios using talents of best American comedians.

Developed in 1975 as a way to fill a gap in the NBC program Saturday Night (later renamed to Saturday Night Live) was not that original idea - a variety show performed in front of live audience and containing songs, sketches and political satire. Most probably it would never catch on if Lorne Michaels would not hire the small group of young comedians, at that point unknown talents like John Belushi, Jane Curtin, Dan Aykroyd or Chevy Chase. They brought a new approach to rather conservative programming in television and quickly became a hit. After 5 years the cast begun to change, which did not worked well, even though among the new faces in SNL were Eddie Murphy, Joe Piscopo and Gilbert Gottfried - the ratings were low and audience was constantly unhappy with the changes that were made to the program. In later years numerous generations of comedians were changing in the cast, for some it was a beginning of big careers (f.e. Mike Myers, Jimmy Fallon, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Andy Samberg, David Spade, Kristen Wiig).

The program itself is still being broadcast live from New York NBC studios, but after the initial success SNL is still struggling to regain the position - although they are always using lots of great comedians, well known figures as guest stars and provide really wide range of sketches the overall outlook of the program is average at best. They mastered the parodies of TV programs, impersonations of TV personalities and politicians, they mastered the political satire (although the Trump run for White House made it much easier for them) most of the non-political and non-parody sketches are rather poorly written and lack content. Often the basic idea for sketch are great and they cover really wide range of topics, but they seem to be half-baked without many jokes or often even without the punch line. Another thing is that plenty of humor in Saturday Night Life is taken from current news, which means that after a while they lose their original appeal since viewers might not remember what was the situation at the point of the original broadcast or the people they were making fun of are already gone from headlines in media.

SNL became an icon for American comedy and the longest running comedy show, but apart from handful of memorable sketches most of the programs are simply average - they have potential, but lack content, they use a lot of talents that simply fail to deliver. No wonder that Donald Trump jokes created the best ratings in 20 years for Saturday Night Life, because what they are usually offer the viewers is far from being perfect.

Rating	6.0
Funny	5 / 10
Entertaining	4 / 5
Characters	3 / 5
Nonrepetitive	3 / 5