{"id":375832,"date":"2025-11-13T11:39:14","date_gmt":"2025-11-13T11:39:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/375832\/"},"modified":"2025-11-13T11:39:14","modified_gmt":"2025-11-13T11:39:14","slug":"saturday-night-live-uk-reveals-top-creative-team-ahead-of-sky-launch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/375832\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Saturday Night Live UK’ Reveals Top Creative Team Ahead Of Sky Launch"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tEXCLUSIVE<\/strong>: Saturday Night Live UK is cranking into life with the official appointment of its top creative team.<\/p>\n

\n\tDaran Jonno Johnson, who helped pen Disney+ series Wedding Season, has joined the Sky<\/a> series as head writer. Liz Clare, an experienced live TV director behind events including the BAFTA Film Awards, has been hired as series director. <\/p>\n

\n\tThey will be joined by James Longman<\/a>, executive producer of The Late Late Show with James Corden<\/a>, who will become SNL UK\u2018s lead producer. Deadline first reported in April that Longman<\/a> would effectively run the sketch series, while he was confirmed in the role by Sky entertainment boss Phil Edgar-Jones during the Edinburgh TV Festival. <\/p>\n

\n\tSNL<\/a>\u00a0creator Lorne Michaels\u2019 name will be above the door of the UK version, but Longman will\u00a0oversee the series day-to-day, tapping into his experience producing the Late Late Show in LA and making Never Mind the Buzzcocks and Alan Carr: Chatty Man in the UK.<\/p>\n

\n\tSince\u00a0The Late Late Show\u00a0ended in 2023,\u00a0Longman has set up Jolly Octopus<\/a>, a production company co-founded by former Monkey executive Ollie Brack and backed by BBC Studios.<\/p>\n

\n\tJohnson is one-third of sketch group Sheeps and also works as a composer. His other credits include Rose d\u2019Or-winner Parlement for\u00a0France TV, Siblings for the BBC, and animated series Elliott from Earth for Cartoon Network. Clare has directed major live UK broadcasts in recent years, including An Audience with Adele, Glastonbury, the BRIT Awards, MTV Video Music Awards, and Britain\u2019s Got Talent.<\/p>\n

\n\tAnother name working behind the scenes is Shanna Baynard, who will serve as SNL UK\u2018s executive in charge of production. She has overseen production on major series and live specials, working with comedians like Kevin Hart and Michael McIntyre.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cAfter several years in LA, it\u2019s amazing to come back home to such a vibrant and exciting live comedy scene,\u201d said Longman. \u201cSaturday Night Live has set the bar for live sketch comedy for half a century, and to help bring that legacy to London using our amazing on-screen and off-screen talent, along with a tremendous investment in UK production, is a massive honour.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tSNL UK will be produced by Universal Television Alternative Studio\u2019s (UTAS) UK production team and Broadway Video for Sky and Now.\u00a0UTAS UK Productions is overseen by managing director Helen Kruger Bratt. Andy Smith serves as lead producer for UTAS UK Productions alongside Sam Salter, production executive.<\/p>\n

\n\tEdgar-Jones, Sky\u2019s executive director of unscripted originals, said he wanted the remake of NBC\u2019s iconic sketch show to bring \u201cchaos\u201d and \u201cnoise\u201d to the screen. The series will be filmed in a BBC Studioworks facility, which Edgar-Jones hopes will \u201ccapture the intimacy\u201d of the NBC version<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIt\u2019s exciting, a little bit scary as well,\u201d Edgar-Jones told the\u00a0Edinburgh<\/a>\u00a0TV Festival, revealing that Sky talent scouts had been in the Scottish city assessing the next generation of comedy stars at the Fringe.<\/p>\n

\n\tSky\u2019s UK version will launch in 2026 and become the most high-profile international version of the venerable NBC late-night show after remakes in China, Germany, Italy, and South Korea.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"EXCLUSIVE: Saturday Night Live UK is cranking into life with the official appointment of its top creative team.…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":375833,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[171,46310,180816,4540,180817,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-375832","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-james-longman","10":"tag-saturay-night-live","11":"tag-sky","12":"tag-the-late-late-show-with-james-corden","13":"tag-united-states","14":"tag-unitedstates","15":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115542201545215305","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/375832","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=375832"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/375832\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/375833"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=375832"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=375832"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=375832"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}