Saturday Live (British TV programme)
Saturday Live was an innovative television comedy and music show broadcast in the UK by Channel 4 from 1985 to 1987. Heavily influenced by the American show Saturday Night Live (in particular its use of guest hosts), it was produced by Paul Jackson and 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 and many others. The show notoriously featured comedian duo Adrian Edmondson and Rik Mayall in the controversial and eventually banned sketch "The Dangerous Brothers."
All of the episodes were transmitted live and recorded for archive purposes, although some material was pre-recorded. Repeats were retitled Saturday Almost Live.
It was succeeded by Friday Night Live, a shorter and slightly more tightly-formatted version with Elton as the permanent host, which ran for a single series in 1988. The shows' titles consisted of reforming play animations, highly comparable to early MTV idents.
A compilation double DVD set, Saturday Live: The Best of Series One, was released in June 2007, containing almost two and a half hours of material. Although the original title is used in the packaging the title sequence is from the Saturday Almost Live re-runs. "Saturday Live:The Best Of Series 2" was released Feb 4 2008.
Later versions
The series made a return of sorts in the mid 1990's on ITV. Hosted by Lee Hurst, it featured comedians including Harry Hill and Simon Munnery. The series lasted six episodes before being cancelled.
On December 1st 2007 the series was revived by ITV for a one-off hour-and-a-half show titled Saturday Live Again, presented by Marcus Brigstocke. Many comedians were present in the show, famous including Jimmy Carr, Lee Mack, Mitchell and Webb, and Jocelyn Jee Esien. The original shows host Ben Elton also performed. There was musical performances by Bon Jovi and Hard-Fi.[1][2][3][4]
References
External links
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