EXCLUSIVE: It’s now a month since Saturday Night Live UK crashed onto British screens like Melania Trump emerging from a garden bush in Croydon — and the early viewing data is encouraging, if not faultless, for Sky’s remake of NBC’s iconic comedy series.
A Deadline analysis has found that SNL UK has stormed past 86M views across its official online accounts on YouTube, Instagram Reels, X/Twitter, and TikTok, meaning it is consistently going viral, even without counting bootlegged videos on unaffiliated SNL accounts.
Instagram Reels is proving to be fertile ground for Sky’s sketch series, which welcomed guest hosts Tina Fey, Jamie Dornan, Riz Ahmed, and Jack Whitehall across its first four episodes.
SNL UK had generated 55M views on Reels as of Tuesday, with 16 videos getting more than 1M streams. Interest peaked early, with the first SNL UK promotional video, featuring Fey as Mary Poppins, amassing 9.6M views, making it the most-watched clip across all the show’s official channels.
Over on YouTube, Fey’s opening monologue remains the most-viewed moment from the series so far on the Google-owned service, registering 2.7M views, suggesting it was a shrewd move to book the 30 Rock star. It’s noteworthy that three of the first four cold opens feature in SNL’s top five most-viewed YouTube videos to date (full list below), indicating that the show is leading with its strongest material.
The most-watched sketch on YouTube is “The Last Supper,” featuring Jack Shep’s memorable impression of Princess Diana. “The Last Supper” was also the most-viewed sketch on Instagram Reels, with 5.3M streams.
The noise SNL is making online will please Sky, which is using the show to market the pay-TV platform to new subscribers. But online views are unlikely to translate into meaningful revenue for the Comcast-owned company, according to industry sources, and there is no evidence that the series is providing a big boost for Sky’s streaming service NOW.
Full SNL episodes are not even registering in online viewing reports from overnights.tv, suggesting that the NOW streaming figures are so low, they are negligible. Sky will be privy to NOW data that is not published by ratings body BARB via overnights.tv, but the company does not usually disclose these figures. Sky declined to comment.
Saturday Night Live UK‘s television audience started strongly. The comedy’s opening episode debuted with an audience of 226,000, which more than doubled to 528,000 once seven-day viewing was counted. With repeats and other viewing, which is Sky’s preferred ratings measure, the first episode was watched by 784,000. These are impressive figures by Sky’s standards in the UK.
| ‘SNL UK’ Episode | Overnight Rating | Seven-Day Rating | Seven-Day Rating With Repeats |
| 1 | 226,000 | 528,000 | 784,000 |
| 2 | 205,000 | 507,200 | 642,000 |
| 3 | 130,100 | 430,600 | 631,000 |
| 4 | 120,000 | 371,700 | 503,000 |
But SNL UK has suffered steep declines in viewing since the premiere. Episode four, hosted by Jack Whitehall, was watched by 371,700, down 30% from Fey’s opener, according to figures from Digital i. By Sky’s preferred measure, including repeats, the audience fell by more than a third from 784,000 to 503,000.
Dig a little deeper into the numbers, and there are some encouraging signs among younger viewers. SNL UK has grown its audience among 25-34 year olds, a demographic that roughly mirrors the age of the show’s cast. The series launched with 95,000 viewers in this age bracket, rising to 126,300 for the Whitehall-fronted episode, per Digital i.
Overseen by lead producer James Longman, SNL UK will return this Saturday with Nicola Coughlan and the Foo Fighters. Aimee Lou Wood will guest-host episode six on May 2, with Meek providing the music. In comments last week, SNL creator Lorne Michaels praised the UK version as “smarter, funnier, more original” than the U.S. edition, adding that the audience has “taken to it.”
1. Tina Fey Monologue: 2.7M Views
2. ‘The Last Supper’: 2.6M Views
3. ‘The Prince Andrew Plan’ Cold Open: 2.3M Views
4. ‘Sir Keir Makes a Difficult Phone Call’ Cold Open: 1.7M Views
5. ‘Melania Trump Plays Two Truths and A Lie’ Cold Open: 1.5M Views
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