The cast of Saturday Night Live UK, including Hammed Animashaun, Ayoade Bamgboye, Larry Dean, Celeste Dring, George Fouracres, Ania Magliano, Annabel Marlow, Al Nash, Jack Shep, Emma Sidi and Paddy Young.Charlotte Rutherford/Supplied
Saturday Night Live UK, Crave
It was a tough night for Britain’s artistic ego on Sunday. As host Conan O’Brien noted, this was the first Oscars since 2012 that no Brits were nominated for best actor or best actress. It ended up being the fifth year in a row none of the acting prizes went to a performer from the U.K.
Adding insult to injury, the Canadian/American comedy impresario Lorne Michaels is launching Saturday Night Live UK this week. It’s modelled on NBC’s 51-year-old sketch-variety show – as if the Monty Python isles don’t know how to make meaningful TV comedy of their own.
SNL U.S. legend Tina Fey hosts the first episode; the band will be Wet Leg. The cast is comprised of barely known British sketch comedians, many without a Wikipedia page to their name.
This is far from the first international franchise of SNL; few have lasted more than a season. We’ll wait to see how Saturday Night Live UK’s first episode unfolds; in Canada, that will be Sunday, on Crave.
The Forsytes, PBS Masterpiece
Millie Gibson as Irene Heron and Joshua Orpin as Soames Forsyte in The Forsytes.Sean Gleason/Supplied
The novels that comprised John Galsworthy’s The Forsyte Saga (published between 1906 and 1921) have been much adapted for screen – the best, in hindsight, being the 1967 BBC 26-part serial. That proto-prestige television event left Britain’s pubs empty every Sunday night and started a national conversation about (then still legal) marital rape.
This latest adaptation of the scandalous tale of an unhappy upper-middle-class (rich) family in Victorian England comes from screenwriter Debbie Horsfield (Poldark), has a Downton Abbey meets Dallas feel to it and won’t change any laws.
The first six-episode season is mostly a prequel to what’s in the books, the plot much fiddled around with and the female characters allegedly filled out. Jolyon (Danny Griffin) is the goodie-goodie Forsyte, full of moral objections and artistic yearnings; Soames (Joshua Orpin), his cousin and rival, is the cold, calculating Forsyte, mustache ready to twirl. An Irish seamstress, a ballet dancer and a Fabian architect soon show up to give the family a kick in the class.
The Forsytes didn’t get great reviews in Britain when it premiered on Channel 5 last fall – but, of course, it didn’t; it’s the type of costume drama designed to be exported to American audiences. Even before the first season’s premiere this Sunday, PBS had already renewed it for two more.
The Lady, BritBox
Natalie Dormer and Mia McKenna-Bruce in The Lady.James Pardon/Supplied
This Brit drama – first episode on BritBox now – is a little more with it. The timing’s a bit off, alas, for a Crown-adjacent show that orbits around Sarah Ferguson, the former wife of the former prince Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor.
Game of Thrones’ Natalie Dormer plays Fergie in this four-episode miniseries, which focuses on her dresser-turned-murderess Jane Andrews. Dormer is not promoting the show because of new details that emerged since it shot about the real Ferguson’s connections to Jeffrey Epstein.
Personally, I don’t think it’s unethical to consume a true-crime miniseries about a convicted killer just because the one-time Duchess of York happens to be a character in it.
Rising star Mia McKenna-Bruce is brilliant as Jane, a working-class northerner who works for Fergie at Buckingham Palace and then sticks with her through thick and thin. The Ripley-esque character’s fascination with royalty – which dates back to the “fairy tale” wedding of Diana and Charles – is depicted as highly unhealthy, her proximity to the royal circus exacerbating her mental-heath issues and emboldening her worst instincts.
Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man, Netflix
Cillian Murphy as Tommy Shelby in Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man.Robert Viglasky/Netflix/Supplied
The film-length, Second World War-set conclusion of this long-running British crime drama will be available to rabid fans on Netflix on March 20. Well, all fans who weren’t quite rabid enough to be bothered to catch The Immortal Man during its two-week cinematic release, that is.
Created by Steven Knight, Peaky Blinders ran on BBC from 2013 to 2022; its six seasons followed Great War veteran Tommy Shelby (Oscar winner Cillian Murphy) as he built his Birmingham street gang up into a proper criminal empire.
The show was part of British TV’s attempt to steal back some small-screen swagger from the Americans in the wake of The Sopranos and Breaking Bad. The Globe and Mail’s John Doyle called it a “must see” in his review of the first season: “There’s obvious inspiration from several dark HBO dramas and, at the same time, a twisted homage to the traditional British period drama featuring tweedy gents and women in nice frocks. It’s a messy hybrid, but magnificently ambitious.”
Perfect Days, CBC Gem
Koji Yakusho in Perfect Days.Neon
One non-Brit pick for the anglophobes: Directed by Teutonic auteur Wim Wenders (Wings of Desire), this German-Japanese co-production became the first film directed by a non-Japanese filmmaker to be nominated as Japan’s official entry at the Academy Awards, in 2024.
It follows a Tokyo public toilet cleaner named Hirayama (Koji Yakusho) as he goes about his daily routine. We aren’t talking porta-potties here, but the spiffy loos of the Shibuya district designed by 16 master architects.
Hirayama has lunch, takes pictures of the sun peeking through trees, has brushes with family; the movie’s a Zen meditation set around the seats where everyone around the world pauses for reflection. The Globe and Mail’s Johanna Schneller made it a Critic’s Pick: “I humbly suggest that this simplest of films may well change your life.” On Gem March 20.