‘Saturday Night Live UK’ Season 2 Just Added Its Most Unexpected Secret Weapon

Published Sep 7, 2026, 10:40 AM EDT Tania Hussain is an Executive Editor at Collider responsible for creative, editorial, and managerial duties. In addition to leading content ideation and development, she works to generate innovative and compelling ideas for feature articles and reviews with her editorial team across Features, Lists, Reviews, and Interviews. She also serves as the primary editor overseeing Collider’s Signature Series profiles, spotlighting some of the most influential voices in film and television. Tania has helped cover and ideate content for major events for Collider, including the Toronto International Film Festival. She has also conducted more than 100 interviews since her start in the business more than 15 years ago. Some favorites include Joel McHale, Charlie Cox, Jennifer Garner, Tina Fey, Kate Winslet, Bob Odenkirk, Andy Richter, Jordan Schlansky, Jamie Dornan, Yeardley Smith, Rafe Spall, Esther Smith, and a reasonable toss-up between Cookie Monster and Kermit the Frog. She has covered set visits, in-person junkets, and red carpets for several films and TV shows, including most recently, The Sheep Detectives, Masterchef, and Star Trek: Starfleet Academy. Four months after its breakout first season wrapped up on Sky and Peacock, Saturday Night Live UK returns Saturday with more behind it than when it premiered this past March. After winning Best Comedy at the Edinburgh TV Festival this year and seeing Jack Shep’s wonderfully unhinged Princess Diana sketch take TV Moment of the Year, the show heads into Season 2 with real heat and a lot less to prove. The trick now is in fine-tuning its formula for more comedy without messing up the chemistry that made its first season such a surprise. Enter SNL UK’s newest cast member, Freddie Meredith. Fresh off his Edinburgh Fringe debut, Need a Light?, which earned him the Best Newcomer Award nomination, Meredith is no stranger to audiences, having appeared in shows like Andor, Such Brave Girls and Make That Movie, written by his current co-star, Paddy Young. He is also set to star in the Toronto International Film Festival entry, Everybody Wants To F*ck Me with Taron Egerton. While adding a 12th performer feels like messing with a good thing, what makes Meredith such an unexpected secret weapon is how naturally his blend of theater, television, stand-up, and sketch experience becomes an asset for a show that asks its stars to do almost everything. Meredith Brings an Unusually Useful Skill Set to ‘SNL UK’ That unexpected path is what makes his skill set so useful here. According to a Sky press release, Meredith trained at drama school and got his start in theater before finding his way into comedy. From there, he began his stand-up and created short sketches online alongside some major acting credits. While those are different muscles to work, SNL UK happens to need nearly every one of them, as seen with its ridiculously talented cast in its first season. Between cold opens poking fun at political figures and obscure sketches about British pork, live performances need their performers to respond and react to whatever happens in the room. That “roll with the punches” vibe creates an environment that prompts its cast to create ridiculous characters before the audience even has time to wonder what on earth they’re watching. Thankfully for Meredith, his television work and social sketches bring something different yet again. Being funny inside an ensemble is not the same as holding the stage by yourself, but Meredith has spent a lot of time now doing both. Even his biggest comedy heroes — including Jamie Demetriou, Tim Key, Steve Coogan, Steve Carell, and Nathan Fielder, as well as Saturday Night Live veterans Tina Fey and Kristen Wiig — suggest he’ll be pretty comfortable bouncing between those aspects of comedy that cover everything from painfully awkward and cringe to broader sketch work. ‘SNL UK’ Could Turn Meredith Into Its Next Breakout Star Image via Sky UK/Eva Pentel Of course, SNL UK could prove just as useful for Meredith as he is to the show. He arrives recognizable without being overly familiar — at least just yet. This gives audiences a bit of fun by discovering what else he can do in real time. While a role in a sitcom or movie only shows us one character, a weekly sketch series can turn the same actor into six completely different people before the episode is over. That kind of opportunity means even more after Season 1 proved how quickly strange ideas can take off and go viral on socials, like Mr. Blobby or The Traitors’ parody with “The Great Big Crab Man.” Nobody knew which characters or sketches would stick before the season began, but that unpredictability is why adding someone like Meredith is so exciting. He gets to find a bizarre voice, impression, or character multiple times a week, with everyone suddenly asking who he is. And SNL UK has already proven its cast is why we watch, versus comedians filling out the American show’s legacy checklist. Since the series premiere this spring, individual sketches have found audiences far beyond their Saturday-night broadcast, while Sky says their show has become its biggest among viewers aged 16 to 34. For Meredith, that is a much bigger stage to show audiences what he can do and not just the version some already know from one role. As he’s arriving with plenty of momentum too, SNL UK will surely give him something none of those projects can quite offer on their own: the freedom to keep surprising audiences. And for a performer with this many different comic muscles, that is the most interesting part of all. Saturday Night Live UK returns for Season 2 on Saturday, September 12, with Jeff Goldblum as host and CMAT as musical guest. The season will debut with six episodes this fall, with six additional shows planned for early 2027. The series airs on Sky in the U.K. and streams the following day on Peacock in the U.S.