The cast of 'Saturday Night Live Arabia' (Photo: OSN)With Saturday Night Live UK debuting this weekend, it joins a surprisingly long list of international attempts to recreate NBC’s late-night institution. Over the past three decades, broadcasters from Germany to Japan to South Korea have all tried their hand at localized versions of Saturday Night Live. Taken together, those experiments offer an unofficial rulebook for how to make—or break—an international SNL. Politics were even touchier for Saturday Night Live China, which had no intention of ridiculing the government. Whether SNL UK becomes the next SNL Korea or the next SNL China remains to be seen.

Source: International New York Times March 18, 2026 15:00 UTC