It seems like there’s a new celebration of the “Saturday Night Live” legacy every other month at this point. Last year, there was the late-night variety show’s 50th anniversary special, a star-studded affair with cast members old and new, celebrities aplenty, musical performances, sorely missed recurring characters from the days of yore, and plenty of jokes at the expense of the show’s creator and producer, Lorne Michaels. To accompany the special, Peacock aired the four-part docuseries, “SNL50: Beyond Saturday Night,” diving deep into aspects of the show fans don’t often get an intimate glimpse of. Then, there was “Ladies and Gentlemen . . . 50 Years of SNL Music,” a feature-length documentary directed by Questlove about the show’s truly iconic and totally unique musical performances. And then there was the 2024 narrative feature, “Saturday Night,” where a slew of young actors and comedians stepped into the shoes of the not-ready-for-primetime players cast in the series’ first season, documenting the lead-up to the first-ever episode in real time.
In Morgan Neville’s new documentary about the man, the myth, the legend Lorne Michaels, fittingly titled “Lorne,” talking heads muse that “little in TV has been explored as much as that first season [of ‘SNL’].” And Michaels himself — that is, when Neville gets him mic’ed when he’s not trying to give the cameras a slip — seems to agree. Neither Michaels nor Neville seems particularly interested in spending this documentary rehashing those early days of “SNL.” (Though the documentary does retread some of the ground covered in the recent docuseries about the show.) Rather, they’re keen to offer a backstage glimpse into the series’ extensive, storied production process to highlight why “SNL” has stood the test of time in ways that NBC-sanctioned media can’t always give audiences. It’s not exactly raw, but it is unapologetic; a more authentic and appropriately ridiculous look at the only show of its kind to last this long.
