Where to watch the SNL UK cast's stand-up specials
SNL UK is on track to beat the American original, and its Weekend Update is already there. Here's where to watch the cast's stand-up, from Ania Magliano and Paddy Young to Larry Dean.
Nobody expected to be writing this when Sky announced a British Saturday Night Live: the copy is catching up with the original. Eleven episodes in, SNL UK is looser, stranger and more willing to risk a bad-taste joke than the show that has been running out of Studio 8H since 1975. And at the Weekend Update desk, it's already ahead.
The critics who turned up to sneer mostly didn't get to. The first series was rated 88% positive on Rotten Tomatoes, and in August it won Best Comedy at the Edinburgh TV Festival awards, along with TV Moment of the Year for Jack Shep's Princess Diana. When series two opened in September, the Telegraph's review was headlined "fresher and funnier than the stale US original".
Weekend Update is the proof
The British Update is anchored by two stand-ups, Ania Magliano and Paddy Young, and launched with Charlie Skelton (8 Out of 10 Cats, 10 O'Clock Live) as its head writer. It plays like a stand-up double act that happens to have a news desk: quick, a little cruel, and delivered by two people who can barely keep a straight face. Reviewers praised the pair's charm from the first night, and one American critic noted the jokes had more bite than Colin Jost and Michael Che's.
That comparison is the point. Jost and Che have held the American desk for more than a decade, and they're back again for its 52nd season. Their Update has settled into a comfortable routine. The British version still has something to prove every week, and you can feel it in the writing.
It isn't finished. The ratings are small: series two opened to about 105,000 overnight viewers, roughly half the first series' launch audience. Some sketches run a minute too long, and at least one reviewer felt during series one that Magliano and Young hadn't yet found their chemistry as a double act. But the clips travel. Sky says the first series racked up more than 200 million views online, and the material is there.
The best news for stand-up fans is that much of the cast came up through live comedy, and several of them have specials you can watch tonight.
Ania Magliano: I Can't Believe You've Done This
Half of the Update desk, and a stand-up since she was 18. Her 2023 Edinburgh hour was nominated for Best Show at the Edinburgh Comedy Awards and was filmed at the Royal Court Theatre in London as her debut special. Expect laid-back storytelling and sharp observations.
Where to watch: Sky Comedy and NOW in the UK, where it premiered on December 23, 2025.
See her live: Her new hour, Peach Fuzz, is touring the UK and Ireland, with US dates at the Bell House in New York on December 3 and Dynasty Typewriter in Los Angeles on December 8.
Paddy Young: Hungry, Horny, Scared
The other half of the desk. Young's debut hour was nominated for Best Newcomer at the 2023 Edinburgh Comedy Awards, and he was named Best Newcomer at the 2024 Chortle Awards. In the show, the Scarborough comic leaves a nightmare flatshare, moves back in with his parents, and finds himself face to face with Thor, the walrus that turned up on Scarborough's beach in December 2022 and bore an unsettling resemblance to him. It was recorded for 800 Pound Gorilla at Up The Creek in London in 2024.
Where to watch: ITVX in the UK, free with ads. Outside the UK, check 800 Pound Gorilla's YouTube channel, where it was posted in 2025.
Larry Dean: Fudnut and Fandan
One of the most established stand-ups in the cast. The Glaswegian has been nominated for the Edinburgh Comedy Award three times and has two specials out.
Fudnut, his Edinburgh Comedy Award-nominated hour, covers, among other things, heading to California after a break-up. Fandan, his debut special, was recorded in his hometown and takes in an attempt to make friends through bank robbery and tea with murderers.
Where to watch: Fudnut is free on YouTube, where it was released in December 2024. Fandan came out in 2023 through 800 Pound Gorilla and aired on Channel 4 that summer; check Channel 4's streaming service or Dean's own channels for where it lives now.
Annabel Marlow: ...Is This Okay??
Marlow is the cast's musical comedian. She was in the original line-up of Six when it debuted at the Edinburgh Fringe, playing Katherine Howard, and her solo hour is a comedy gig at the piano: big, properly sung songs, some deliberately unfunny ones, and stories about love, contraception, overthinking and graphic designers.
Where to watch: NextUp, which released it in 2024 as part of its Rising Stars range (58 minutes). It's also listed on Apple TV.
No special yet, but worth a ticket
Ayoade Bamgboye won Best Newcomer at the 2025 Edinburgh Comedy Awards for Swings and Roundabouts, the first Black woman to take the award, and also won NextUp's Biggest Award in Comedy that year. There's no filmed special yet. Until there is, look for Rise & Shine with Channel 9, the Channel 4 Comedy Playground pilot she wrote and starred in, and catch her live: at the 2026 Fringe she brought back Swings and Roundabouts for three nights and tried out a new work-in-progress, Small Talk.
George Fouracres is an associate artist at Shakespeare's Globe, came up in sketch alongside Phil Wang and Jason Forbes, and debuted a stand-up hour, Gentlemon, in 2019. We couldn't find a filmed version, so for now the best showcase is the show itself, starting with his Keir Starmer in the very first cold open.
Jack Shep, the youngest member of the cast, has done stand-up, including a spot in the BBC New Comedy Awards in 2023, but has no special yet. His Princess Diana is the show's breakout character.
Emma Sidi comes from sketch, improv and character comedy rather than stand-up; her 2024 stage show Emma Sidi is Sue Gray is the closest thing to a solo hour. The Telegraph's series two review singled her out for rescuing sketches that were flagging.
The rest of the cast came up through acting and sketch: Hammed Animashaun, Celeste Dring (one half of sketch duo Lazy Susan), Al Nash (known for his online sketches) and Freddie Meredith (Big Boys), who joined for series two.
How to watch SNL UK
- UK: Live on Saturdays at 10pm on Sky One, and streaming on NOW.
- US: Peacock, the day after it airs.
- Canada: Crave.
- Australia: HBO Max, two days after the UK.
- New Zealand: NEON, a day after the UK.
The first half of series two runs on Saturdays until October 24, and the remaining six episodes air in January and February 2027. Selected sketches and Update segments go up on the show's YouTube channel, which is the fastest way to see why the British desk is winning.