‘SNL U.K.’ Ratings Drop by 42% for Riz Ahmed-Hosted Episode 3

“Saturday Night Live U.K.” Episode 3 saw its sharpest drop in ratings yet, falling by 95,050 from its season high. Riz Ahmed hosted the third episode with music from Kasabian.

Episode 3 garnered ratings of 130,950, which equated to an audience share of 1.8%. That’s a 42% drop from the inaugural episode of the live comedy show, which garnered 226,000 viewers and a 36% drop from Episode 2, which was watched by 205,000 viewers.

Episode 1 was hosted by Tina Fey, with cameos from celebrities including Michael Cera and Graham Norton, while Episode 2 was hosted by “Fifty Shades” star Jamie Dornan.

Episode 3 featured a cold open with another sketch about U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer urging Britain’s top three celebrities – soccer star Harry Kane, actor Olivia Colman and cartoon character Peppa Pig — to help cheer up the nation. “SNL U.K.” castmember George Fouracres played Starmer accompanied by Al Nash as Kane, Emma Sidi as Colman and Annabel Marlow as Peppa.

Ahmed’s opening monologue saw him make some self-deprecating jokes about British attitudes to life and he also participated in sketches about “The Traitors,” the Easter Bunny giving birth and a society of historic authors among other topics. At the time of publishing, his monologue has drawn 41,000 views on YouTube, 17 hours after it was posted. In the same time period the cold open has drawn 227,000 views on the video sharing platform.

In Saturday night’s 10pm timeslot “Bill Bailey: Thoughtifier” on Channel 4 and “Top of the Pops 1989” on BBC 2 both got more than double the number of viewers as “SNL U.K.,” watched by 342,000 and 444,000 people respectively. On ITV in the same timeslot “The Jonathan Ross Show” had almost 1 million viewers while the news on BBC 1 garnered an audience of over 3 million. However, those are all free to air channels while Sky, which airs “SNL U.K.” is not.

However, “SNL U.K.” was still the best performing content on Sky 1 that day. “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom,” which played before it, was the second-highest, drawing an audience of 71,660.

Jack Whitehall is set to host Episode 4 with Jorja Smith as the musical guest.