{"id":874036,"date":"2026-04-05T16:31:13","date_gmt":"2026-04-05T16:31:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/874036\/"},"modified":"2026-04-05T16:31:13","modified_gmt":"2026-04-05T16:31:13","slug":"snl-u-k-ratings-drop-by-42-for-riz-ahmed-hosted-episode-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/874036\/","title":{"rendered":"&#8216;SNL U.K.&#8217; Ratings Drop by 42% for Riz Ahmed-Hosted Episode 3"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ lrv-u-margin-lr-auto  lrv-a-font-body-m   \">\n\t\u201cSaturday Night Live U.K.\u201d Episode 3 saw its sharpest drop in ratings yet, falling by 95,050 from its season high. Riz Ahmed hosted the third episode with music from Kasabian.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ lrv-u-margin-lr-auto  lrv-a-font-body-m   \">\n\tEpisode 3 garnered ratings of 130,950, which equated to an audience share of 1.8%. That\u2019s a 42% drop from the inaugural episode of the live comedy show, which garnered 226,000 viewers and a 36% drop from Episode 2, which was watched by 205,000 viewers. <\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ lrv-u-margin-lr-auto  lrv-a-font-body-m   \">\n\tEpisode 1 was hosted by Tina Fey, with cameos from celebrities including Michael Cera and Graham Norton, while Episode 2 was hosted by \u201cFifty Shades\u201d star Jamie Dornan.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ lrv-u-margin-lr-auto  lrv-a-font-body-m   \">\n\tEpisode 3 featured a cold open with another sketch about U.K. <a href=\"https:\/\/variety.com\/2026\/tv\/global\/snl-uk-cold-open-daddy-keir-starmer-peppa-pig-olivia-colman-1236708501\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Prime Minister Keir Starmer urging Britain\u2019s top three celebrities<\/a> \u2013 soccer star Harry Kane, actor Olivia Colman and cartoon character Peppa Pig \u2014 to help cheer up the nation. \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/variety.com\/t\/snl-u-k\/\" id=\"auto-tag_snl-u-k\" data-tag=\"snl-u-k\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">SNL U.K.<\/a>\u201d castmember George Fouracres played Starmer accompanied by Al Nash as Kane, Emma Sidi as Colman and Annabel Marlow as Peppa.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ lrv-u-margin-lr-auto  lrv-a-font-body-m   \">\n\tAhmed\u2019s opening monologue saw him make some <a href=\"https:\/\/variety.com\/2026\/tv\/global\/riz-ahmed-saturday-night-live-uk-1236708497\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">self-deprecating jokes<\/a> about British attitudes to life and he also participated in sketches about \u201cThe Traitors,\u201d the Easter Bunny giving birth and a society of historic authors among other topics. At the time of publishing, his monologue has drawn 41,000 views on YouTube, 17 hours after it was posted. In the same time period the cold open has drawn 227,000 views on the video sharing platform.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ lrv-u-margin-lr-auto  lrv-a-font-body-m   \">\n\tIn Saturday night\u2019s 10pm timeslot \u201cBill Bailey: Thoughtifier\u201d on Channel 4 and \u201cTop of the Pops 1989\u201d on BBC 2 both got more than double the number of viewers as \u201cSNL U.K.,\u201d watched by 342,000 and 444,000 people respectively. On ITV in the same timeslot \u201cThe Jonathan Ross Show\u201d had almost 1 million viewers while the news on BBC 1 garnered an audience of over 3 million. However, those are all free to air channels while <a href=\"https:\/\/variety.com\/t\/sky\/\" id=\"auto-tag_sky\" data-tag=\"sky\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Sky<\/a>, which airs \u201cSNL U.K.\u201d is not.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ lrv-u-margin-lr-auto  lrv-a-font-body-m   \">\n\tHowever, \u201cSNL U.K.\u201d was still the best performing content on Sky 1 that day. \u201cIndiana Jones and the Temple of Doom,\u201d which played before it, was the second-highest, drawing an audience of 71,660.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ lrv-u-margin-lr-auto  lrv-a-font-body-m   \">\n\tJack Whitehall is set to host Episode 4 with Jorja Smith as the musical guest.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cSaturday Night Live U.K.\u201d Episode 3 saw its sharpest drop in ratings yet, falling by 95,050 from its&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":874037,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[3937],"tags":[77,197,240803,382,16,15],"class_list":["post-874036","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tv","tag-entertainment","tag-sky","tag-snl-u-k","tag-tv","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/116353059253178386","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/874036","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=874036"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/874036\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/874037"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=874036"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=874036"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=874036"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}