A new four-part docuseries will delve into the history and behind-the-scenes make-up of Saturday Night Live as the sketch show celebrates its 50th anniversary.
SNL50: Beyond Saturday Night will premiere on Jan. 16 on Peacock, and it’ll feature over 60 contributors, including many SNL alumni. The four episodes will each center around a different topic as a way of examining the show’s legacy and how it comes together each week.
Episode one, for instance, is called “Five Minutes” and will center around the SNL audition process (prospective cast members, as the title suggests, get five minutes to show off their best material). The episode will include never-before-seen audition footage, as well as reflections from cast members on how they prepared for and eventually arrived on SNL.
Episode two, “Written By: A Week Inside the SNL Writers Room,” will offer a behind-the-scenes look at how sketches go from script to stage. And episode three, “More Cowbell,” will take that one famous sketch and look at how a silly comedy bit can transform into a cultural phenomenon.
And the final installment of the series will center on Season 11, one of the strangest but most pivotal seasons in SNL’s history. Though marred by plenty of chaos, this season wound up cementing how creator Lorne Michaels would steer the show over the next 40 years
(The cliff notes for Season 11 is: Michaels returned to the show after a five-year break and filled the cast with established names — Robert Downey, Jr., Joan Cusack, Anthony Michael Hall, to name a few — rather than up-and-coming comedians. The gambit flopped, garnering poor ratings, critical derision, and internal strife. Damon Wayans, frustrated by his experience on the show, effectively forced his own firing after going off script during a sketch. And the season ended with a fake fire being set in the studio, with Lorne Michaels making a rare on-camera appearance to save only one cast member, Jon Lovitz.)
Each episode of SNL50: Beyond Saturday Night was helmed by a different director: Robert Alexander took episode one, Marshall Curry took episode two, Neil Berkeley took episode three, and Jason Zeldes took episode four. Documentarian Morgan Nevill served as an executive producer on the series.
“I’ve been obsessed with Saturday Night Live as long as I can remember,” Neville said in a statement. “For SNL50, I’ve been lucky to collaborate with some of my favorite independent filmmakers to tell some deeper stories of SNL. Taken together, these standalone episodes give a new perspective of SNL and what makes it work.”
Daniel D`Amico for SANREMO.FM
