While the 50th season of Saturday Night Live began in September, the series hasn’t yet made as much of a spectacle out of that as fans might have expected. But as we move into 2025 and into the calendar anniversary of SNL’s debut in 1975, there are a few more special events on the horizon. Last month, the series announced a live, three-hour anniversary special to air on February 16. Now, this morning, Peacock has announced a new docuseries to look back at the series’ past ahead of its major birthday.
SNL50: Beyond Saturday Night is a four-part series that will debut on Peacock on January 16. A press release promises at least 60 contributors, including SNL alumni, and is created by filmmaker Morgan Neville (Piece By Piece, 20 Feet From Stardom). “I’ve been obsessed with Saturday Night Live as long as I can remember,” the filmmaker says. “For SNL50, I’ve been lucky to collaborate with some of my favorite independent filmmakers to tell some deeper stories of SNL. Taken together, these standalone episodes give a new perspective of SNL and what makes it work.”
So what are these standalone episodes? The first, “Five Minutes,” focuses on the audition process, and you can probably guess what the second, “Written By: A Week Inside The SNL Writers Room,” is about. The third 60-minute episode is, somehow, focused entirely on the “More Cowbell” sketch. But the episode that this writer is most interested in is the series’ fourth, which focuses on SNL’s often maligned 11th season—the season that saw Lorne Michaels return from his five-year hiatus and bring new cast members like Robert Downey Jr. and Joan Cusack with him. The series also boasts “unprecedented access to the show’s archives and talent”—given what cast member Bowen Yang recently shared about those archives, this series certainly has plenty to work with.
