It took Saturday Night Live UK seven episodes to take on Donald Trump’s good pal Nigel Farage but we finally have it from British comic Peter Serafinowicz.
Making a cold open cameo depicting the Reform UK leader, Serafinowicz played Farage in a sketch set in 2046 when he is Prime Minister and the monarch is ‘King Trump’.
He kicked off by downing a pint, a notorious Farage move, before the Sky One audience was introduced to his deputy, Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch, played by Ayoade Bamgboye. In the sketch, the two parties had combined.
The pair walked the audience through jokes about mass deportations in London, hantavirus and a “straight pride march.”
“King Trump assures us he has almost negotiated a ceasefire over the Strait of Hormuz,” joked Badenoch later on.
Current Prime Minister Keir Starmer, once again played with aplomb by George Fouracres, then appeared with his former deputy Angela Rayner (Celeste Dring), as they delivered gags about how long Starmer can possibly stay in charge after a disastrous set of local elections for his Labour Party.
The Farage roast extended to the Weekend Update with Ania Magliano and Paddy Young, which reserved much of its comedy for the fallout from the local elections. Magliano said: “If these local election results would be carried over to the general election in three years’ time, there would be a significant impact… as my body hits the pavement.”
This week’s ep of SNL UK is hosted by Ted Lasso star Hannah Waddingham, who joked in her opening monologue about her Apple TV comedy and how much it has in common with SNL UK.
“Rich Americans working together, team spirit, and communal showers,” she said. “Yes that was surprising and excellent. Brett Goldstein is a very hairy man.”
Tonight’s show comes with the mood positive in SNL UK HQ after the series was renewed with an extended 12-episode order before the current one is even finished.
The cold open, which was set 20 years in the future, poked fun at the renewal when Starmer examined a newspaper that read “SNL UK Renewed… For Series 3.”
“Wow a big delay,” said Rayner. “Series 2 must have been rough.”
Poking fun at Daniel Day-Lewis
Later, a separate SNL UK sketch poked fun at the method acting methods of Daniel Day-Lewis.
A sketch which appeared to be about an ordinary British couple played by Fouracres and Emma Sidi saw Sidi’s character take a mask off to reveal that she had in fact been Day-Lewis all along, getting into character of a part by pretending to be a British woman for a full 18 years.
Day-Lewis was played by Larry Dean. The triple-Oscar winner joked: “Didn’t you find my six month comas strange, or what about the time I was obsessed with Abraham Lincoln,” the latter remark being about one of his Oscar-winning roles playing the U.S. President.
After being passed over for the part he had been preparing for in favor of Reese Witherspoon, Day-Lewis turned back into Sidi’s character at the end of the sketch.
There is one episode left of SNL UK Season 1, which will be hosted next week by Ncuti Gatwa.


