| Saturday Live | |
|---|---|
| Genre | Variety, Stand-up comedy |
| Country of origin | United Kingdom |
| Original language(s) | English |
| No. of series | 4 |
| No. of episodes | 39 (list of episodes) |
| Release | |
| Original network | Channel 4 (1985-8) ITV (1986, 96, 2007) BBC1 (1993) |
| Picture format | 4:3 |
| Original release | 12 January 1985 – 1 December 2007 |
| Chronology | |
| Related shows | Saturday Night Live |
Saturday Live (Friday Night Live in 1988) is a British television comedy and music show, initially broadcast by Channel 4 from 1985 to 1988 and briefly revived by ITV in 1996. A few one-off editions have also been screened, including a contribution to the BBC's 1993 Comic Relief telethon.
The United Kingdom, officially the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland but more commonly known as the UK or Britain, is a sovereign country lying off the north-western coast of the European mainland. The United Kingdom includes the island of Great Britain, the north-eastern part of the island of Ireland and many smaller islands. Northern Ireland is the only part of the United Kingdom that shares a land border with another sovereign state—the Republic of Ireland. Apart from this land border, the United Kingdom is surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean, with the North Sea to the east, the English Channel to the south and the Celtic Sea to the south-west, giving it the 12th-longest coastline in the world. The Irish Sea lies between Great Britain and Ireland. With an area of 242,500 square kilometres (93,600 sq mi), the United Kingdom is the 78th-largest sovereign state in the world. It is also the 22nd-most populous country, with an estimated 66.0 million inhabitants in 2017.
Television (TV), sometimes shortened to tele or telly, is a telecommunication medium used for transmitting moving images in monochrome, or in colour, and in two or three dimensions and sound. The term can refer to a television set, a television program, or the medium of television transmission. Television is a mass medium for advertising, entertainment and news.
In a modern sense, comedy refers to any discourse or work generally intended to be humorous or amusing by inducing laughter, especially in theatre, television, film, stand-up comedy, or any other medium of entertainment. The origins of the term are found in Ancient Greece. In the Athenian democracy, the public opinion of voters was influenced by the political satire performed by the comic poets at the theaters. The theatrical genre of Greek comedy can be described as a dramatic performance which pits two groups or societies against each other in an amusing agon or conflict. Northrop Frye depicted these two opposing sides as a "Society of Youth" and a "Society of the Old." A revised view characterizes the essential agon of comedy as a struggle between a relatively powerless youth and the societal conventions that pose obstacles to his hopes. In this struggle, the youth is understood to be constrained by his lack of social authority, and is left with little choice but to take recourse in ruses which engender very dramatic irony which provokes laughter.
Contents
The series made stars of Ben Elton, Harry Enfield, Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie, and featured appearances (in some cases first television appearances) by Patrick Marber, Morwenna Banks, Chris Barrie, Emo Philips, Tracey Ullman, Craig Ferguson, Craig Charles and many others. The show featured comic duo Adrian Edmondson and Rik Mayall in their act The Dangerous Brothers.
Benjamin Charles Elton is a British/Australian comedian, author, playwright, actor and director. He was a part of London's alternative comedy movement of the 1980s and became a writer on series such as The Young Ones and Blackadder, as well as continuing as a stand-up comedian on stage and television. His style in the 1980s was left-wing political satire. Since then he has published 15 novels and written the musicals We Will Rock You (2002) and Love Never Dies (2010), the sequel to The Phantom of the Opera. His novels cover the dystopian, comedy, and crime genres.
Henry Richard Enfield is an English comedian, actor, writer, and director. He is known in particular for his television work, including Harry Enfield's Television Programme and Harry & Paul, and for the creation and portrayal of comedy characters such as Kevin the Teenager and Loadsamoney.
Stephen John Fry is an English comedian, actor and writer. He and Hugh Laurie are the comic double act Fry and Laurie, who starred in A Bit of Fry & Laurie and Jeeves and Wooster.
All episodes were transmitted live, but contained a small proportion of material recorded beforehand. Recordings of shows were edited into compilation repeats, retitled Saturday Almost Live.
The third series, Friday Night Live, renamed to reflect its scheduling move to the titular day, is the last of the programme's original iteration. Shorter and slightly more tightly-formatted show, it retained Elton as permanent host. The show's titles consisted of re-forming clay animations, highly comparable to early MTV idents.
MTV is an American pay television channel owned by Viacom Media Networks and headquartered in New York City. The channel was launched on August 1, 1981, and originally aired music videos as guided by television personalities known as "video jockeys" (VJs). At first, MTV's main target demographic was young adults, but today it is primarily teenagers, particularly high school and college students.
The show was resurrected as a segment for 1993's Red Nose Day BBC telethon, hosted by Ben Elton, with appearances by Reeves and Mortimer, Eddie Izzard, Hugh Laurie, and David Baddiel and Rob Newman.
Edward John Izzard is a British stand-up comedian, actor, writer and political activist. His comedic style takes the form of rambling whimsical monologue and self-referential pantomime. He had a starring role in the television series The Riches as Wayne Malloy and has appeared in films such as Ocean's Twelve, Ocean's Thirteen, Mystery Men, Shadow of the Vampire, The Cat's Meow, Across the Universe, Valkyrie and Victoria & Abdul. He has also worked as a voice actor in The Wild, Igor, The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian, Cars 2 and The Lego Batman Movie.
David Lionel Baddiel is an English comedian, novelist and television presenter. He is known for his work alongside Rob Newman in The Mary Whitehouse Experience and partnership with Frank Skinner. Besides comedy, Baddiel is also a published novelist and a screenwriter who is the author of the children's novels The Parent Agency, The Person Controller, AniMalcolm and Birthday Boy.
Robert "Rob" Newman is a British comedian, author and political activist. Newman first found fame with The Mary Whitehouse Experience before forming a successful comedy partnership with David Baddiel in the early 1990s.
The show made a return in 1996 on ITV, regaining a Saturday slot and retitled accordingly. Hosted by Lee Hurst, it featured comedians including Harry Hill and Simon Munnery. The series lasted eight episodes before being axed.
Lee Hurst is an English comedian.
Harry Hill is an English comedian, author and television presenter. He has narrated You've Been Framed since 2004, and hosted Harry Hill's TV Burp for eleven years, from 2001 to 2012. A former medical doctor, Hill won the Perrier Award for Best Newcomer at the 1992 Edinburgh Fringe Festival, and began his career in radio and television comedy with the radio series Harry Hill's Fruit Corner.
Simon Munnery, also known as his characters "Alan Parker: Urban Warrior" and "The League Against Tedium", is an English comedian.
On 1 December 2007, the programme was revived by ITV for a one-off titled Saturday Live Again, presented by Marcus Brigstocke. Comedians included Jimmy Carr, Lee Mack, Mitchell and Webb, and Jocelyn Jee Esien. The original show's regular host Ben Elton also performed. There were musical performances by Bon Jovi and Hard-Fi.
Marcus Alexander Brigstocke is an English comedian, actor and satirist. He has worked in stand-up comedy, television, radio and musical theatre.
James Anthony Patrick Carr is a stand-up comedian, presenter, writer, and actor who holds both British and Irish citizenship. He is known for his deadpan delivery, dark humour, and heckler interaction. Carr moved to a career in comedy in 2000.
Lee Gordon McKillop, known by his stage name Lee Mack, is an English comedian and actor. He is known for writing and starring in the sitcom Not Going Out, for being a team captain on the BBC One comedy panel show Would I Lie to You?, hosting the Sky One panel show Duck Quacks Don't Echo and for presenting the panel show They Think It's All Over.
