“Are they meant to be comedians?” Oasis' Liam Gallagher speaks for everyone in Britain when shown Saturday Night Live's painfully unfunny sketch based on the Gallagher brothers' rarely-mentioned sibling rivalry

13 Oct 2024, 23:02 · louder

By Paul Brannigan
published 13 October 2024

Saturday Night Live has been running for 50 years. This weekend's Oasis sketch might be the least funny three and a half minutes in its entire history

(Image credit: Saturday Night Live / NBC)

Saturday Night Live is one of US television's most acclaimed and best-loved institutions, a weekly comedy sketch show now in its 50th season. Across five decades the show has introduced the world to comedy legends such as Chevy Chase, Billy Crystal, Mike Myers, Chris Rock, Tina Fey and Kristen Wiig, featured iconic musical performances by some of music's biggest superstars, and served up countless 'must see' TV moments celebrated worldwide.

It gives us no pleasure then to report that the Oasis parody sketch aired on this weekend's SNL stands as one of the most painfully unfunny three and a half minutes in the show's storied history.

If you weren't aware, tickets for Oasis' 2025 North American stadium tour went on sale last week, and sold out in a single day, the sort of achievement that the Manchester indie rock band were entirely incapable of pulling off in America at their absolute peak in the '90s. And given that their US profile has never been higher, it makes absolute sense that the country's most celebrated topical sketch show might seek to mine some comedy gold from their much-publicised return.

Instead, the nation's most gifted comedy writers elected to create the sort of skit you'd imagine a couple of 10-year-old British school kids could dream up in half an hour, based on the famously fractious relationship between the Gallagher brothers, delivered in accents that visit more UK cities than Oasis will be playing next summer.

Watch 'Noel' (James Austin Johnson) and 'Liam' (Sarah Sherman) deliver three and a half minutes more excruciating than Little James below.

Weekend Update: Noel Gallagher and Liam Gallagher on Oasis' Reunion Tour - SNL - YouTube

Watch On

Understandably, Liam Gallagher's critique of this hilarious banter-fest was savage. Alerted to the skit by a Twitter follower - X, whatever - he responded by posting, “Are they meant to be comedians?”

Let's all move on now.

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Paul Brannigan
Contributing Editor, Louder

A music writer since 1993, formerly Editor of Kerrang! and Planet Rock magazine (RIP), Paul Brannigan is a Contributing Editor to Louder. Having previously written books on Lemmy, Dave Grohl (the Sunday Times best-seller This Is A Call) and Metallica (Birth School Metallica Death, co-authored with Ian Winwood), his Eddie Van Halen biography (Eruption in the UK, Unchained in the US) emerged in 2021. He has written for Rolling Stone, Mojo and Q, hung out with Fugazi at Dischord House, flown on Ozzy Osbourne's private jet, played Angus Young's Gibson SG, and interviewed everyone from Aerosmith and Beastie Boys to Young Gods and ZZ Top. Born in the North of Ireland, Brannigan lives in North London and supports The Arsenal.

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