Did SNL UK Defy The Critics?

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2:06Hello and welcome to this episode of The Rest is Entertainment with me Marina Hyde. And me Richard Osman. Hello listeners, hello Marina. Hello Richard, how are you? I'm okay. The sun has been out. Sort of spring is in the air. 100%. That's nice, isn't it? People listen to the podcast on lovely long walks through the country. Is that how you imagine it? Gambling through daffodils? I would have thought so, yeah. Yeah, I would have thought so too. And just looking directly at their feet instead of at the nature. Yeah. I don't really like a walk through the countryside. Do you know what I mean? I know I'm supposed to enjoy it.

2:36Right, Kemi. I don't like sandwiches. I don't like walks through the country. But I do. I like the idea of being out there. And fresh air is nice. Yeah. But you know when people say, oh my God, it's amazing communing with nature. I'm not, what are you, I guess there's trees. Would you do it in a golf cart? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's true. I saw Project Hail Mary. Yeah. Listen, I'm happy. Okay. It's done good business. It's done amazing. I'm really happy that a film, I mean, it's not entirely an original, is it? Because it's based on a book, which by the way, people are obsessed with this book.

3:07You know, it's a big swing and people have turned out for it. I have to say, you know, there's a lot of things that I found wrong with it, but equally there were lots of great bits about it and to be honest if you don't you know people watch 20 hours of absolute rubbish at home and if you don't turn out for a couple in the cinema then there aren't going to be cinemas so it's the biggest film of the year so far and i think going and have a look and just seeing what the biggest film of the year so far is to me always a valuable exercise if your local tickets aren't exorbitant and ryan gosling is in it but we're not talking about that are we what are we talking about well no good times for comedy question mark because snl uk launched on saturday night last one laughing lol uk we're going to talk about that and uh the world of comedy we're also talking about netflix appears to have divested themselves of runaway business success as ever which is as you know is megan's retail brand attached to her show with Love Megan and we're going to have a look at the state of the Sussexes media and content empire and also what happened with Netflix and talk a little bit about Netflix and retail which is quite interesting I think and I think you've spoken to somebody who has some quite interesting information about about retail and Netflix which is interesting yeah let's get into it comedy SNL UK we've spoken before about that happening and you know I was very much a booster of it there was a huge amount of sort of toxicity around it and negativity around it and oh this is going to be awful and snl america is awful and all this stuff and you know my view has always been i think your view as well they are spending a load of money on comedy here and when the cast came out i was like they've got some really good people here oh this is younger this is interesting this is different so i had very very high hopes for it of course it's in all of the press telling me how awful it was going to be we haven't talked about what you think about it i'll go on record as saying i don't think it could have been better i thought it was magnificent james longman who produced it is listen we'll talk about writers and we'll talk about performers and we'll talk about formats and all of those things to take that show with the pressure that was on it with i know this doesn't sound like a pressure but sometimes it's the money that was behind it to have landed that plane in a way that i just thought there was last from start to finish i I genuinely thought it was a magnificent achievement.

5:35I mean, I've said before that I don't like SNL, the US thing. By the way, I love reading about it. I've read every book about it. For some reason, I love the lore around it. But the thing itself, it's not my thing. But if it is your thing, it's such a successfully done transfer. I see it didn't please all the TV critics. One of the things I would say about TV criticism in this country is it's a sort of gentleman, and I mean gentlemen and gentlelady, amateur sort of thing, isn't it? We so often, there's a lot of TV critics in the country who are given the job. It's like, oh, you know, you're good at writing and you've got opinions.

6:09Why not have them about this thing? We don't really do it with the city or, you know, with business or with sport. Or with film. But we somehow, for some reason, there's this whole tradition of saying, you don't really know anything about TV. Why don't you write about TV? And there's a little bit, I did think that there was a little bit of that in some of it that just simply didn't understand what had happened. Bits of it I'm reading, I think you have no idea or understanding of why this format is over here, how it got made, who these people are. If you're saying these people are, you know, new faces, then you shouldn't be writing about television because almost all of these people, if you're even vaguely online, you'll know half of them.

6:45One of them called it shockingly competent. I think they were quite surprised that they didn't hate it. I think they couldn't work out what to say because they could see it wasn't bad, but they couldn't work out if it was good. They didn't have the confidence of actually saying, oh, okay, I'll actually... And, you know, the first episodes of comedies famously are very, very poorly reviewed in both senses of the word. Poor. I remember the first reviews of The Office, which we were just saying... People didn't understand what it was. Yeah. I mean, just saying this is a disgrace. Where's all the money gone?

7:16Ricky Gervais can't write. He might be, you know... The reason you do need SNL is this, is you can take all of those people. But Lorne Michaels, and you have the format of the show, and you have the history of the show. and as a performer that gives you something bigger than you that that exists out there so it's very very very useful to have something that gives you those limits as if you're if you're a writer in that writer's room if you're a performer as well to know that it has to be x minutes long it has to have x amount of sketches there will be two songs in the middle of it there will be a an over enthusiastic live audience in the middle of it you'll be reading from cue cards all of these things that that come from somewhere else it has a brand and a name that you can fall back on it just gives you extraordinary freedom and for for this young group of performers good on sky for taking a big it's a big swing it's that big it's their most expensive unscripted ever everyone told them they were idiots yeah everyone says this is going to be terrible it's going to be the same old faces it's going to be this it's going to be that by the way trump has already shared the cold open so in which starmer's sort of shown sucking up to him in a voice note or whatever so um i it's already part of the global cultural conversation he's finally found an snl he likes trump so that's good it does illustrate something about this show which is by the way the same for the u.s i mean the u.s one's on later it's on 11 30 this is on at 10 is it clippable you get the cultural relevance actually from the clips that go viral things have changed and it's not that you know law michaels always used to say it was like sport and that, you know, some weeks your team has a bad game and then you just come back next week because you're invested in the whole production, as it were.

8:56It got 226 ,000 viewers live. Okay, here's where we are, television guys. But, and there was something I found slightly cringey in one of the trails for the thing where, say, you know, if you're not getting laid on Saturday night and it was sort of almost as bad as saying you're going to be watching it hungover on a Sunday morning. But actually what really needs to happen is that the sketches go viral on social media. That's where you get the cultural relevance now is from those kind of things. But you can't just make clips. That's the point. And that's the point of why it's SNL. That's the point of why it's live on television is you can't clip something from nothing.

9:32You know what I mean? It has to have the mothership before you send these little pods off into the universe. The Princess Di impression in that, Jack Shep's Princess Di impression, I'm so sorry. It wiped the floor with both Emma Corrin and Elizabeth Debicki in The Crown. That's the best Princess Di impression I've ever seen. and by the way the end I know she died 30 years ago so we can talk about the relevance but it was it was epic and that's an 8 minute sketch but right in the middle of it I know you have like a 3 second meme which goes around the world yeah I mean again and which quite frankly Richard was you know put it in the Louvre it was it's such a good impression it's as I say it's wipe the floor with the crowd one thing I would say about it and I do think that this is significant we know it costs a lot the 6 episode order it's 8 now it's it's yeah it's they've gone to eight in the in the middle of the last week before it launches yeah and even eight is like in the us it's it's 20 it's very very difficult to have such small portions if you're trying to bed in casts bed in ideas bed in the whole sort of thing that is going to be the thing of which it is the biggest victim in my view because it's just hard to kind of say oh this is part of our kind of cultural conversation everything but there's six or eight episodes of it now yeah but nothing's part of our cultural conversation anymore you know so it's i i think it's okay and i think you know what does that take nothing is part of our culture what are we talking about i just mean some things must be or we must be talking about something we're not in that thing anymore we go oh let's put wogan on every night and then people get used and then then the whole of britain will watch it all the time but you you know that we live in an always on culture and you know there's something the reason we do this podcast every week the reason and artists are doing little drops of things, music artists, all the time.

11:14It's because if you are not on all the time, then you fall away. And people are like, and actually, you know, even SNL, people are saying, that does 20 episodes a year. Doing eight is very, very small. I don't know if it's possible. If it's very successful, they'll bring it back in sooner and we'll have two runs of it a year or something like that. I don't know. They can do anything they like. They might just keep it going. You think they'll keep it going? No, I think they could keep it going. I mean, they can do anything. That's the point. Sky has the money if they have something that's paying off for them.

11:45They can do anything they want. The thing they shouldn't do is go, we're going to immediately go into 20. Because they didn't know it would be good. I agree that they can. You want it to be good. You hope it's going to be good. And I think it's safe to say it is good. And it won't be for everyone and there'll be hits and misses and stuff like that. But it is the thing that they ordered with this new generation of talent doing something interesting. But you're not immediately going to say, let's do 26 of these. I know you're not. But, well, I mean, I think people will have other bookings. People will have other things.

12:14You have to be relatively organized. You can't just say, this is what we're, okay, now we're always on. I think it's difficult in an always-on world to do that short and order. And that's something I think will be a stumbling block. Having said the mothership is the live show and, you know, the clips come off it. So long as you're branding stuff, SNL, you can have little satellite offshoots of this program on all year round. And then, you know, the main show comes back. but you know if you're Sky you've now got this thing and this group of performers who are attached to this thing who are a stable for you and of course some of them will be off doing movies and some of them will be off doing sitcoms and this out the other but not all of them all the time so it's getting a stable of people a stable of talent who people are hungry to see and you have some ownership over them and they have some loyalty to you and that's what you want with this show you want the show itself and then you want the group of people who come through that show if they go successfully buy ITV, which I don't see why they wouldn't.

13:12You put this on ITV, don't you, on Saturday night? I don't think it matters where it goes. I really don't think it matters where it goes. Okay. It would be getting more than 226 ,000 viewers live. Do you know what? It would be getting 400. I mean, not a lot more. And that doesn't make any difference to the return on investment for Sky. It doesn't make any difference to Lorne Michaels. Why would the economics not change? Well, because if you listen, the difference between getting 250 ,000 viewers and getting 7 million viewers is significant because the ad rates are much, much bigger. The difference between 250 ,000 and 400 ,000 are not massive.

13:49It's a bit, but really the money they're going to make from the show is the ancillary stuff. It is the clipping it. It is building the careers of those people and building projects off the back of them. So, you know, the basic economics of this is a stable of people making this stuff and actually another hundred thousand people watching it live will make a tiny bit of difference but not enough that that's your business model you know no one no one's going to get rich off that extra hundred thousand viewers okay let's talk about last one laughing because we've got and then maybe something about both of them together because i think it's interesting yeah so so last one laughing so we've been talking about snl we're talking about the reviews and it is it's a cultural phenomenon but it is not something that the mainstream of great britain is watching or talking about okay it'll again the clips will start to get on their radar but it'll it'll take people a long time before they work out that snl uk even exists last one laughing however is a different kind of it's a genuine phenomenon i mean you know it's within its first sort of two or three days of over two and a half million people watching it and that just that grows and grows and grows and grows and grows i had so much laughter over the over this last weekend thanks to all these incredible people but so last one laughing is a totally different thing i mean it's totally different it's one day's work yeah it's one day's work but it's what happens 15 years after you give people their break as always just like we always say the minute a format in your we know this format's been around the world for a very long time um but the minute format sort of ages or gets to its second generation within your country you can see now the gameplay is different from the last series i'm fascinated by the comic Everyone's got their face.

15:24Everyone's got their face. But the stakes now that they know that Bob Mortimer has come back to defend the title. Talent fees on this show are insane. I mean, they're like, for many, you know, some will be getting north of a quarter of a million quid and it's a day. Okay. And obviously, they're all, you know, Romesh is going to be on a lot more than, I don't know, Sam Campbell or something, even though they're all. So it's all a bit different. Now you think, oh, hang on, I could come back and get one of the best appearance fee in television. Again. Again, if I win this thing. So the gameplay, to me, maybe I'm just suggestible, but people have told me this in advance from people who connected with the production saying, oh, yeah, no, they're really playing it this time.

16:03And you are starting to realize that there are sort of skills, which is you realize that it's sort of an endurance game. and the skill that when you have the mic as it were not necessarily when you're playing a joker but when you're just talking to someone is to be able to do that bob mortimer thing and to just derail so completely yeah that it's just like a broadside from nowhere that you didn't expect and people just can't stop laughing can i say who the absolute standout for me and all comedy fans will know him already and he's been on house of games and i've seen him live so many times sam campbell yeah i think if you have not seen sam before and that's the lovely thing about last from laughing it gets such a big audience that actually it does introduce you know like um bemmy who's who's who's on it um who i love but but sam is so brilliant at it he doesn't even seem to need a face yeah it feels like it feels like he's luke to bob's darth vader do you know what i mean the idea that i do think it's interesting one thing i think is interesting about this is first of all is that we know how amazon work they whereas netflix will like try and get a hit will spend huge amounts of money on something and try and get a global hit with one property.

17:13Amazon liked to sort of replicate formats. And so they've got lots of the, you know, they've got various, but they also have a sort of market map, as we've talked about before. You don't need that many shows. They've got Clarkson's Farm, which covers part of it. They've got Beast Games, which covers part of it. And then in the UK, they've got this, which covers part of it. It's really interesting. Last time they were, last time it aired, when it became this huge hit immediately, A third of the audience to Last One Laughing hadn't watched any content at all on Amazon prior to the month of release.

17:43They are trying to do something. I find it quite fascinating with both these shows. I know you're saying, Sky, I've got all these comedians and so on, but to some degree, I have to say, I think Sky are sort of raging against the dying of the light. And what Amazon are doing is they want to get you in because they want to sell you shopping. They want to sell you insurance. They want to sell you services. They want to be the everything corporation. It's almost bizarre. In the old days, you know, the BBC would have a new comedy show and the ITV would have one and we'd compare it. Now it seems to me such a category mistake that you and I, that we're even talking about these together because the companies are so, so different.

18:18And I have to say, it's sort of weird. Like the comedians are just like, the fact that it's both happening through some sets of comedians is sort of nuts, really. But actually, these two huge kind of corporate things, I fear it is a battle that has already been the comedians of the foot soldiers. And it's a battle that's already been kind of won and lost. People are starting to understand they can use comedy again. I would rather these companies who are very different business models and they will take big swings on everything. I would rather they were taking big swings on comedy than, say, F1.

18:52And I love F1. I love talking about the two of them together because they are very, very different swings because both companies do very different things. And I love that you could almost transplant the cast of SNL to Last One Laughing Series 15 in 15 years' time. I was thinking that when I was watching it. But there's something also weird about comedy, which is that it's such a kind of crazily zero-sum thing. People will watch absolutely hours of a really rubbish thriller with loads of ridiculous plot holes. and they'll be like, it was okay. I mean, you know, past the time. 30 seconds of a sketch they don't like, they lose their minds.

19:29They lose their minds. And it's so, and you just, I do feel, consider how long you will give an incredibly two and a half star thriller. And then how vicious you are about 30 seconds of something that didn't like get you immediately. Give it a break. What a joyous weekend of laughing. And I just want to say thank you to all the production teams for that work. And I do think SNL listeners will have ups and downs, I'm sure of that. But I thought it landed extraordinarily well. And I'm excited to see where they're taking this. I just want to see more of those performers, you know, and I want to hear more from those writers.

20:04And before this happened, there wasn't a place that they could do that particularly other than individually and on TikTok and stuff like that. Now all of them are together. And I find it exciting to think what will come of it. It's a rare ray of optimism. Right. After the break, we're going to be talking about disturbances in the force within the empire of Meghan and Harry, the content empire of Meghan and Harry. Anyway, join us after the break.

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22:29Right. Megan and Harry. There's a big story in Variety last week, one of the showbiz Bibles, there are three holy books, saying that Netflix had fallen out with Meghan and Harry, really. Just a little reminder of what happened. When Meghan and Harry left the royal family, they set up this sort of content production company called Archwell. And they did various deals, big money deals, most notable of which were they did a$20 million deal with Spotify to produce podcasts. It ended up producing one series before that fell apart. He did a book deal with Penguin Random House that was an absolute roaring success.

23:08That was the fastest selling nonfiction book of all time. He got at least$40 million. That went very well. And they did what's always pegged as a$100 million deal for Netflix. People are now sort of rowing back on that, saying it's closer to 60. You would expect that because it would have been like, oh, if you create some hits. Of course, different clauses would have kicked in. And I'm sure that then it would have taken it to 100. but they're now saying it's maybe 60 million. So the base level would have been 60 million, which again, nice work if you can get it. Nice work if you can get it. Money I'd rather was being spent on comedy.

23:36So yeah, yes, absolutely. Intentional comedy. In a way it was, yeah. So they did a documentary about their exit, a sort of misery documentary, which was massively, massively successful. I think that was the biggest ever documentary debut for Netflix. And they did ones about polo and global justice, which weren't. And then their various development projects as producers have come to nothing. but they also ended up doing Megan's lifestyle show with love Megan and what was interesting there is that Netflix became a retail partner they basically paid to establish her brand as a retail entity that's a real holy grail for any company if you can own a piece of merchandise you can see from from Mr.

24:18Beast and you can see absolutely we spoke about just now about Amazon if you can have an audience who then give you more money to buy something that you also own that is an incredible business to be in. MrBeast is YouTube's highest paid creator by a long way and he makes all his money off chocolate. So there we go. So what was the retail business? It was jam famously. It was sort of dried flowers to sprinkle on food. It was some baking mixes. It was rosé. There will have been a scented candle. Anyway, so there've been all kinds of stories about this retail. People were like, oh, it's a flop then.

24:53Oh, it's a wild success because someone tried to type in how many units they could get and there were loads of them So they thought, all right, actually, they put in a huge order. The reporting on it's been really bad. But a couple of weeks ago, we heard that they were sort of separating and that Netflix were no longer going to be part of this retail arm. Megan said she has ever had experienced meaningful and rapid growth. I mean, even... Her company. Yeah. Yeah. Everything has to be meaningful. Even your P &L is meaningful. It can't just, you know, she's creating wonder in every spreadsheet. Yeah.

25:26Then came this Variety article, and it's quite an attack on them. And they've spoken to lots and lots of people within Netflix. And by the way, I should say that legally, this Variety article is caveated all the way through with denials from the Sussexes people saying, no, this isn't the case, this isn't the case. So accept those caveats from us as well. Yeah, so accept them here. People suggesting that Megan was very difficult in meetings, that if something was said that she didn't like, the camera would go off and the microphone would go off. I think the Sussexes people have come back and said, you know, sometimes like all working parents, the children come into the room.

26:03You know, I mean, I personally always wander off my Zooms for ages. But anyway, then there are people saying... I love the idea you're on a work Zoom and your child wanders in. He goes, do you know what? I'm just going to deal with that. Yeah, because they don't have any nannies. They said they had no good ideas. They thought there would be much more than the fact that it was all just lots of jam. Why did they think there was going to be good ideas? I mean, I don't know. They spend their entire life around creative people. And so they must have an idea. Why are they sitting across from... I'll tell you what they actually thought.

26:32And this is what the interesting thing is. To some degree, the Sussex kept kind of cannibalizing what they had with Netflix in that Netflix had this documentary series. And then they discovered that they were going to sit down with Oprah for CBS. So it's like, okay, they were going to do this tell-all documentary series. Then they discovered he'd done the kind of book deal and that was coming out whenever it was. And there's always this sort of sense that, you know, but don't worry, you can have With Love, Megan. That's all for you. So that they were getting to some degree the scraps. That's not true because the documentary was hugely successful.

27:04Variety said they had$10 million worth of surplus stock for this. That's a lot of jam. That's a lot of jam. As I say, you know, they've denied all sorts of things. One thing we do know is that Ted Sarandos has unfollowed her and the brand on Instagram, even though the Sussex lawyers, like they're great friends with Ted. Again, I hate to say it, but I always unfollow my great friends and their brands when there's no problem. Anyhow, why did they do it? Why did Netflix drop out of the deal? Yeah, like you were just asking that. And speaking to someone who understands this from within US Netflix, When Ted Sarander said, it's great discovery for us, I remember reading that quote and thinking, sorry, what?

27:46Like, people find this jam in a shop and think, oh, I must watch that Netflix I've heard of. The retail angle, you want shoppable content one way or another. When they did the documentary, their misery memoir, Leaving the World Family one, the big one, the only hit, everything that was featured in it essentially sold out. There were no affiliate links. They didn't have partnerships with anyone. But everything from, I don't know, kitchen equipment to the shoes she was wearing to even the Hermes baby blanket in the background, which sells for more than a thousand pounds, sold out around the world.

28:18And Netflix are making no money on that, of course. But then they think, hang on a second. Wow, they seem pretty good for shoppable content. The reason they're trying to do this is quite interesting. They have lots of different ways of selling stuff to do with their shows. They have a direct consumer business, you know, their own website where you can buy Stranger Things or Wednesday stuff. So that's standard merchandise. But they have lots of experiential pop-ups. They have lots and lots of retail partnerships. They had a hugely strong one with Target in the U.S. for Stranger Things. Obviously, they do things, everything from Lego to Monopoly to all the different things you can do.

28:55They do drinks brands. They did a collaboration with Lacoste. They had lots of products. Squid Game did something massive with KFC, which was huge. And the live experiences of that. Bridgerton has got lots of different types from kind of quite fancy things within Liberty, where they do tea sets and things like that, to lots of live different events. But Stranger Things, to some degree, is the template franchise for all of this retail stuff. And by the way, the template franchise for just like for everything at Netflix, if they could replicate that. All of that strategy is very, very heavily influenced by Disney and how that corporation has played for the last 50 years more.