Peacock docuseries adds little to 'SNL' legacy

In honor of Saturday Night Live's 50th season, completing 90 minutes of live television in six days – already a difficult feat – wasn't enough. Additionally, the highly regarded variety show is flexing its pop culture muscle in the region. Following Jason Reitman's biopic “Saturday Night,” the four-part documentary series “SNL50: Beyond Saturday” will be released ahead of next month's three-hour TV show on Studio 8H night”. Executive produced by Academy Award winner Morgan Neville (“20 Feet to Stardom,” “Roadrunner”), the series is NBC's latest move across the board to celebrate its transformation from anarchic experiment to full-fledged institution. But 50 years later, the legend of Lorne Michaels’ Miracle Circus has already was celebrated many times. (Season 40 also featured a star-studded anniversary celebration, giving this round of toasts a unique feel Already seen it.) “SNL50” adds little to this half-century of anecdotes, oral histories and archival footage. Instead, it embellishes around the edges, taking advantage of the opportunity to dress up old chestnuts with gimmicky forms and an aided corporate PR push.

Each chapter of “SNL50” is intended to be a stand-alone mini-documentary. Although Juaquin Cambron serves as showrunner for the entire series, each episode's director oversees his or her own project. Robert Alexander's “Five Minutes” is a look back at the audition process; Marshall Curry's “The Writers: A Week in the SNL Writers' Room” is exactly what it sounds like; Neil Berkley Neil Berkeley's “More Cowbell” is a 49-minute annotation of a six-minute sketch; Jason Zeldes's “Season 11: A Weird Year” looks back at an infamous episode that nearly ruined the entire show.

The common denominator throughout the process is the Rolodex of talent provided to producers. Michaels himself doesn't sit down for interviews, but pretty much everyone besides him does, from talent bookers to prop masters and, of course, stars. so Plenty of stars: Actors from nearly every generation are present, from the troubled '80s (Joe Piscopo! Terry Sweeney!) to more nostalgic eras (Will on Not Ready for Primetime Players!) Ferrell and Molly Shannon) in the 1990s (Bill Hader and Andy Samberg) and today (Ego Nwodim, Sea Heidi Gardner and Bowen Yang for the current roster).

SNL50 adds to the rich canon of 30 rock legends as a direct result of all this eager participation. “Five Minutes” is structured around performers watching and reacting to their own audition tapes, which are kept in a vault but made freely available to Alexander's team. The device became thin when used repeatedly for more than an hour, but produced some lovely nuggets: Maya Rudolph's childhood classmate Gwyneth Paltrow recommended her to the producers; ha Del's portrayal of Al Pacino made the notoriously straight-faced audience laugh. Jennifer Coolidge, Kevin Hart, and Jordan Peele didn't make the cut, but we got a glimpse of an alternate timeline in which they would have made the cut. Written By also indulged our good-natured voyeuristic appetites, taking a front-row seat at Ayo Edebiri's first hosting gig last February, showing off the half-baked tones and last-minute fights behind the finished product.

The thing is, if you're the kind of comedy fan who enjoys watching the Saturday Night Live docuseries, you'll almost certainly enjoy what it has to reveal. Did you know that Lorne and his lieutenants almost never smile during tryouts? You know how Tuesday is when everyone stays up late writing sketches, and Wednesday is when meter readings determine lineups? Those interested in a show called “SNL50” might say “yes,” since they already have access to more comprehensive resources, such as reporters Tom Shiers and James Andrew Miller's tome “New York Live Broadcast”. Miller appears as a talking head in the final episode, as if he's been summoned by echoes of his own seminal work.

At just four episodes in, “SNL50” also falls somewhere between generalist investigation and niche deep dive. “Five Minutes” and “The Author” are overarching, timeless looks at the show's essential components. (“Authors” includes recommendations from past writers like Alan Zweibel, Larry David, and John Mulaney to flesh out its prime footage.) After them, “More Cowbell” and “Weird One Year” feels like a hard, disorienting extreme turn to concreteness. More Cowbell is a quasi-documentary that makes a bold but destined to be hilarious attempt at profiling some of the funniest people on the planet. “Weird Year” picks a worthy subject – a freak season – and stars an up-and-coming cast, including Robert Downey Jr. and Anthony Michael Hall, with little sketch experience – but from Much of the context has been removed from its condensed history.

The context above involves Michaels' exit and eventual return as executive producer, as well as NBC executive Dick Ebersole's brief reign. Ebersol's name was never mentioned out loud on “SNL50,” and despite Eddie Murphy's star-making time in the cast, there was no mention that Michaels couldn't take credit for this particular success. to him. Sometimes the empowering nature of “SNL50” comes through in what it can include; sometimes a trained eye can see how Michaels' blessing affects what's been deliberately left out. “SNL50” is far from a clear narrative, nor is it content to be a collection of minor curiosities. But it doesn’t need that to win the approval of its subjects.

All four episodes of SNL50: Beyond Saturday Night are now streaming on Peacock.