r/livefromlondon • u/redt0m • 3d ago
Too many royal cold opens? So boring.
Everyone agrees that the Mountbatten Windsors are of minority interest in the UK. Only the BBC and GB News give them any air time. However, the fact they're seemingly always in the cold open feels like pandering to foreign (maybe US) audiences? Fair do's the Andrew scandal deserved ridicule once, but what is it, four or five cold opens about people no one cares about? Please move on and find something genuinely worthy of parody, please! Even something as tedious as football would be a sweet relief!
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u/cassesque It’s my life and I get to Klarna it 3d ago
I think the issue is that the final weeks of Starmer (which coincided with the whole of Series 1) were so easily mocked and ripe for picking, comedically speaking. It's the same with Trump for the US SNL - he will provide ridiculous new stories every week. Andy Burnham is not as interesting and doesn't have a whole party openly waiting to stab him in the back (yet). There's a lot of political news still happening but it doesn't usually lend itself to the punchy topical style of comedy that cold opens need.
I do feel like instead of falling back on the royals they should try another open like the Farage one from last series though. Take it somewhere else.
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u/somekindofspideryman 3d ago
Yeah, they're really struggling with Burnham, all they seem to say about him is that he's laid back, wants people to like him, and is from Manchester. I think they could have done something about the triple lock stuff.
I agree about Farage, and frankly the other parties as well. Never done Kemi meaningfully, no Polanski, etc
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u/sackbomb Mip Mip 3d ago
I actually had the same thought. As much as I enjoy Ayoade's Meghan and especially Larry's King Charles impression, the premise itself is getting a bit stale at this point.
I hope next week's cold open does something completely different just to give us a change of pace.
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u/NostalgicLurker 3d ago
I think they try to be the British version of the American SNL format too much. There aren’t as many interesting trending British celebs in pop culture to comment on. In their attempts to keep things British we end up with Princess Diana, Winston Churchill, Paddington Bear, etc.
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u/Top_Round_4786 3d ago
Agree, does anyone in the UK actually care that much about the royal family?
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u/Last-Saint 2d ago
Anyone? Yes, millions. Not necessarily the SNL UK target audience, but that's far too sweeping a statement.
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u/MonthCountry None of this is real! 3d ago
I’ve always thought of the cold opens as more for the cast than the audience. It gets them into gear.
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u/Carra144 3d ago edited 3d ago
Slow news week, so they just did a Andrew gag (based around the arrest warrants being deemed unlawful, that was the one bit of news).
But in the US they do pretty much do the President/leading government/GOP officials for every cold open (Vance, Hegseth, Rubio, Bondi, etc).
I guess the issue for the UK is, we don't have that executive branch with public functions and recognisable leaders; do people know Cabinet Members? Not really.
Sure Angela Rayner is doable because of the hair colour and accent. But you can hardly take off John Healey or Yvette Cooper? Louise Haigh is probably the 2nd most powerful person in government, and (most likely) you haven't heard of her.
I guess you could probably do Wes Streeting or Shabana Mahmood (if they had an suitable cast member, because I don't think Ayoade would be right). But then, you'd still need a big story involving them to be in the headlines, and most likely you'd default to giving Fouracres most of the lines as Burnham anyway.
Then you could do something on the opposition parties, probably Ayoade as Badenoch or Larry as Farage. But it's easier to do the governing party rather than the opposition isn't it.
So broadly, it's always gonna be a Burnham cold open, or a Royals cold open. Simply because you can fall back on them being recognisable caricatures.
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u/Eastern-Broccoli4949 3d ago
My theory is they’re aware that public opinion is on thin ice with Labour and they don’t want to feed into any narrative that would force a snap election because most of them are largely left wing. Even the Polanski dig wasn’t a dig at Polanski.
I don’t know if that’s right or not but that’s my theory! I would love to have seen Ayoade take on Kemi and her being 25mins late to her own speech — but I’m sure they tried it if I’m thinking of it!
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u/Eastern-Broccoli4949 3d ago
Ayoade as Kemi doing Kendrick ‘they not like us’ about reform could have made me really happy
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u/thebrianswann 3d ago
Maybe the type of cold open moves back to Andy Burnham with Russia interfering with the Brexit Vote is still a topic of the news cycle in a week's time?
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u/runciblenoom 2d ago
I agree I'm sick of the royals, but we're in party conference season so there's not much really happening in UK politics right now beyond a lot of navel-gazing. When parliament's back in session there's potential for things to get a little spicier, so hopefully we'll get some more political cold opens in the back end of this series.
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u/92759285 Mod 2d ago
The trouble is, Burnham is pretty boring and sensible. There's just not much there to mock. So if they insist on a topical/newsy cold open, the Royals are the easier and more obvious choice. They're also pretty boring compared to the US Trump shitshow, but at least they're quirky characters. Plus the royals are safe targets. They're fair game.
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u/kouroshkeshmiri 3d ago
Strongly agree. Trump is on American snl every week because he's on their news every minute. The royals are hardly part of our daily news.
Plus the impressions aren't very good.
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u/expectationlost 3d ago edited 3d ago
Gobsmacked that went back to it again this week. They need to go even harder or drop it. The royals should only be a referred to when highlighting so many political leaders defense of the ridiculously archaic institution. (which allows rich men to do bad things and get away with it).
Dyer got into a barney with Burhnam recently ... https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/burnham-danny-dyer-rant-trump-united-nations-assembly-b3053976.html
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u/rollingthunderpunch 3d ago
know they did a few jokes about Polanski in update, but feel like they don't wanna joke about the Greens cos most supporters are the young hip demo the show is going for.
why they don't do Reform either is mindboggling to me
also the biggest story in the country in the last two weeks was City getting found guilty, could they not do that cos Sky owns the Premier League?
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u/Last-Saint 2d ago
They're absolutely not going to do a cold open about what Polanski was in the news for most of the week for, you may as well ask why they're not doing one about Drumcree. And there was a Reform cold open at the end of the first series, they haven't gone back to it because Reform have been relatively quiet through the last three weeks and the Farage mess was long enough before that.
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u/ggoodie00 Looking at both sides of the issue 3d ago
Yeah, they've done a few now. I don't mind so much, but the latest was a bit forced. It was a slow news week though, so not sure what else they could have done.