Saturday Live (Channel 4 TV series)

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Saturday Live was an innovative television comedy and music show broadcast in the UK by Channel 4 from 1985 to 1987. Heavily influenced by the American show Saturday Night Live (in particular its use of guest hosts), it was produced by Paul Jackson and made stars of Ben Elton, Harry Enfield, Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie, and featured appearances (in some cases first television appearances) by Patrick Marber, Morwenna Banks, Chris Barrie, Emo Philips and many others. Notoriously featured comedian duo Adrian Edmondson and Rik Mayall in the controversial and eventually banned sketch The Dangerous Brothers.

All of the episodes were transmitted live and recorded for archive purposes, although some material was pre-recorded. Repeats were retitled Saturday Almost Live.

It was succeeded by Friday Night Live, a shorter and slightly more tightly-formatted version with Elton as the permanent host, which ran for a single series in 1988. The shows' titles consisted of reforming play animations, highly comparable to early MTV idents.

A compilation double DVD set, Saturday Live: The Best of Series One, was released in June 2007, containing almost two and a half hours of material. Although the original title is used in the packaging the title sequence is from the Saturday Almost Live re-runs.

It made a return of sorts in the mid 1990's on ITV. Hosted by Lee Hurst, it featured comedians of the day such as Harry Hill and Alan Parker, Urban Warrior. It lasted six episodes before being canned.

On December 1st 2007 the show was revived by ITV for one night. It was titled Saturday Live Again. The show was hosted by Marcus Brigstocke and starred Jimmy Carr, Mitchell and Webb, Jocelyn Jee Esien and featured special guest Ben Elton with music from Jon Bon Jovi & Hard-Fi.[1]