Page 13 of the Guardian, Saturday 25th January 1986:

Adam Sweeting on a nerve-wracking new comedy show

Jokes alive

HE CUT his teeth on the Two Ronnies, Blankety Blank and The Generation Game, but Geoff Posner says he's really "one of the Ready Steady Go! generation," and his memories of the kinetic Sixties pop show have left him with a strong and lingering desire to create live television. At 8.30 pm tonight, Channel 4 is broadcasting the first of eleven 90-minute shows called Saturday Live. The series London Weekend, is produced by Posner and Paul Jackson and features almost everyone you can think of in contemporary British comedy.

The obvious precursor of Saturday Live would appear to be NBC Television's Saturday Night Live, the American show inaugurated in 1975 which launched the careers of Chevy Chase, John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd, among others. Not so, says Posner.

"The idea for this came about when Paul Jackson and I worked on Carrott's Lib. That's when we developed a taste for doing long live shows. We decided it would be great if we could do a variety show for Saturday night - that wasn't the traditional kind of Saturday night variety show - using people who are on the cabaret circuit and other people we'd come into contact with through other programmes: Paul via The Young Ones and myself via Carrott's Lib, the Lenny Henry Show and Not The Nine O'Clock News."

Saturday Live uses a few regulars among a constantly shifting crew of performers, special guests and presenters, rather than a stable repertory company of players with a different host each week favoured by the American programme. According to Posner, "the problem with repertory groups is that they start becoming the reason for the show. We decided that we would start with the script first of all and then get people in as we wanted them."

The first show features guest hostess Tracey Ullman, Rik Mayall and Ade Edmonson as the Dangerous Brothers, the Oblivion Boys, John Wells, Ben Elton, erstwhile revivalist preacher Sam Kinison, Robbie Coltrane, and pop acts Squeeze, Fergal Sharkey and INXS. All the pop groups will play live in the studio.

The potential pitfalls are obvious. Put the cream of the nation's most volatile comedy performers in front of a live TV audience at peak time on a Saturday night, and who knows what the eavesdropping microphone might pick up? Ben Elton, whose recent writing credits include Happy Families and Rowan Atkinson's Blackadder 2, has been a stand-up comic for five years, but stills dreads his regular six-minute slot in the new programme. "Live television is without doubt the most nerve-wracking thing," Elton insists.

Host for show nine will be Peter Cook, a choice which reflects a desire among the Saturday Live team to present a broad spectrum of comedy and to avoid being typecast as yet another permutation of the Comic Strip/Young Ones faction. "Anyone who can raise a smile is welcome," says Ben Elton. "I'm absolutely certain that if Ronnie Barker wanted to do it we'd be completely thrilled. He's a genius performer."

Posner and Jackson have cast their net fairly wide. Posner made a trip to New York to check out the current series of Saturday Night Live and to investigate new young comics in the clubs, while Jackson headed for Los Angeles. They've located half a dozen American performers who they hope will find the Saturday Live climate congenial, though Posner was dismayed to discover that American television has the right wing watchdogs tugging at the seat of the trousers. He suspects there may be a similar climate brewing in Britain.

But isn't it the function of comedy to hit back against that sort of pressure?

"Yes. Oh, yes. But I think the moment government starts dictating what can and can't go on television, starting to comment on television, then I think we're getting into very dangerous waters. Spitting Image is probably under the political microscope more than we're going to be. But it seems to me we're being watched much more than maybe a couple of years ago."

Nobody is making any predictions about viewing figures. Eight-thirty on Saturday night has long been reserved for bland and unchallenging "entertainment", but Geoff Posner feels there are potential viewers who have been catered for hitherto. "We're saying that there is a younger audience, 15 to 35 say, who are around on Saturday night. Maybe they don't have anyone to go out with or maybe they don't want to go out. Well, they may like our programme."