<\/p>\n
\u201cSaturday Night U.K.\u201d 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.<\/p>\n
Episode 3 garnered ratings of 130,950, which equated to an audience share of 1.8%. That\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
More from Variety<\/strong><\/p>\n Episode 1 was hosted by Tina Fey, with cameos from celebrities including Michael Cera and Graham Norton, while Episode 2 was hosted by \u201cFifty Shades\u201d star Jamie Dornan.<\/p>\n Episode 3 featured a cold open with another sketch about U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer urging Britain\u2019s top three celebrities<\/a> \u2013 soccer star Harry Kane, actor Olivia Colman and cartoon character Peppa Pig \u2014 to help cheer up the nation. \u201cSNL U.K.\u201d castmember George Fouracres played Starmer accompanied by Al Nash as Kane, Emma Sidi as Colman and Annabel Marlow as Peppa.<\/p>\n Ahmed\u2019s opening monologue saw him make some self-deprecating jokes<\/a> about British attitudes to life and he also participated in sketches about \u201cThe Traitors,\u201d 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.<\/p>\n In Saturday night\u2019s 10pm timeslot \u201cBill Bailey: Thoughtifier\u201d on Channel 4 and \u201cTop of the Pops 1989\u201d on BBC 2 both got more than double the number of viewers as \u201cSNL U.K.,\u201d watched by 342,000 and 444,000 people respectively. On ITV in the same timeslot \u201cThe Jonathan Ross Show\u201d 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 \u201cSNL U.K.\u201d is not.<\/p>\n However, \u201cSNL U.K.\u201d was still the best performing content on Sky 1 that day. \u201cIndiana Jones and the Temple of Doom,\u201d which played before it, was the second-highest, drawing an audience of 71,660.<\/p>\n Jack Whitehall is set to host Episode 4 with Jorja Smith as the musical guest.<\/p>\n Best of Variety<\/strong><\/p>\n Sign up for Variety’s Newsletter<\/a>. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook<\/a>, Twitter<\/a>, and Instagram<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.yahoo.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u201cSaturday Night U.K.\u201d 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\u2019s a 42% drop from the inaugural episode of the live comedy […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2359529,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25172],"tags":[352679,369482,319414,352416,359367,348301],"class_list":["post-2359528","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment","tag-graham-norton","tag-keir-starmer","tag-michael-cera","tag-olivia-colman","tag-riz-ahmed","tag-tina-fey"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/\u2018SNL-UK-Ratings-Drop-by-42-for-Riz-Ahmed-Hosted-Episode.jpeg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2359528","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2359528"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2359528\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2359530,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2359528\/revisions\/2359530"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2359529"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2359528"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2359528"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2359528"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}