So, “Saturday Night Live” Is Franchising Out to China
(via The Hollywood Reporter)
Seeing the potential in audiences among the enormous population of China, more international collaborations between U.S. productions and ones in China are happening more frequently.
The latest example is how China’s video site Sohu.com has partnered with Lorne Michaels’ Broadway Video to make a Saturday Night Live for Chinese audiences with Chinese comedians and performers.
The prospect of having a weekly topical sketch show in China is exciting, but we can only ponder what they could possibly get away with in terms of poking fun at the government like the American SNL so often does. One only needs to watch the documentary Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry to see how the Chinese government feels about artists speaking out against them. Lord knows that there’s plenty that’s ripe for a damning and hilarious sketch.
Who knows if it would be even done live in a way that censors didn’t get a chance to have something cut out from the show before reaching the millions upon millions of people that could potentially see it.
What will be even more intriguing to see is how they’ll approach sketch comedy in a cultural climate that’s much different here than in the U.S. Hopefully, this will be a voice that gets to speak out more comedically than any before them.