Saturday Night Live UK has announced its next hosts ahead of the sketch show’s return from a mid-season hiatus.
Bridgerton star Nicola Coughlan will present the series on 25 April, with musical guests Foo Fighters, while Aimee Lou Wood, best known for her roles in Sex Education and The White Lotus, will host on 2 May. She’ll be joined by the singer Meek.
Since the launch of SNL UK on Sky last month, Tina Fey, Jamie Dornan, Riz Ahmed and Jack Whitehall have fronted the comedy series.
The show is taking a break this weekend, and Coughlan will present on its return, after she made a brief appearance in the show’s debut episode.
Musical guests so far have included Wet Leg, Wolf Alice, Kasabian and Jorja Smith.
The sketch show has been received warmly by viewers. However, ratings have dropped from 226,000 for the launch to 130,100 in recent episodes, which exceeds the average viewership for Sky One in the time slot.
Wood’s appearance on the show follows a controversy involving the US version of the show, which offered the actor a rare apology after making fun of her appearance in a 2025 episode.
The SNL skit based on Wood’s The White Lotus character saw SNL cast member Sarah Sherman wearing exaggerated prosthetic teeth in an attempt to parody Wood’s appearance. She called the skit “unfunny and mean” on Instagram, saying she “hated the concept”.
“I actually love being taken the p*** out of when it’s clever and in good spirits,” Wood wrote. “But the joke was about fluoride. I have big gap teeth not bad teeth. I don’t mind caricature – I understand that’s what SNL is. But the rest of the skit was punching up and I/Chelsea was the only one punched down on.”
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Last week, comedian and actor Nick Mohammed said the show was “the best thing that’s happened to British comedy since” Ricky Gervais’s sitcom The Office premiered in 2001.
He told The Independent: “I honestly believe that. To be cynical about it, it’s a shame that it’s taken Americans to come in with a format and say, ‘Just do it like that.’ When I was starting out, there were so many production companies and channels wanting to emulate Saturday Night Live, and not having the guts to do it. But I think they’ve nailed it.
“I watched the first episode, and was literally emotional at the end when they all came out. If it was maybe 10 years ago, I would have killed for it.”
Reviewing the first episode, The Independent’s Nick Hilton wrote: “While SNL represents the quintessence of the American comedic establishment, it is not a title that has much Clapham omnibus cut-through here in Britain. It’s a bit of a shame, then, that the show plays it so safe with the formula, importing a commodity that has evolved from an anti-establishment brawl to a slick launchpad for franchise comedians.
“[Lorne] Michaels (producing from afar), director Liz Clare and head writer Jonno Johnson have done a good job putting together an intriguing panoply of talents, and they deserve credit for resisting the lure of bigger names who might’ve been tempted by a short run.”
He continued: “But they don’t invest in much of a shake-up to the formula – host’s monologue, timely skits, fake adverts, musical guests, and all that jazz – which means SNL UK lacks its own spark of irreverence. At best it shows what it’s learnt from a half-century of its New York cousin; at worst it seems like tepid cosplay.”
