LOS ANGELES — “Saturday Night Live” is having a 50th anniversary, and things are happening. Jason Reitman’s backstage dramedy “Saturday Night,” released last year, is set around the series’ first episode. There was a profile of executive producer Lorne Michaels in the New Yorker last week, taken from Susan Morrison’s upcoming biography, “Lorne: The Man Who Invented Saturday Night.
” Peacock, NBC’s streaming arm, has an engaging docuseries, “SNL50: Beyond Saturday Night,” now streaming, its stand-alone episodes focused respectively on auditions (“Five Minutes”), the creative system (“Written By: A Week Inside the SNL Writers Room”), an iconic sketch (“More Cowbell”) and when Michaels returned to run the show after a five-year break (“Season 11: The Weird Year”). Premiering Jan. 27 on NBC, “Ladies & Gentlemen .
.. 50 Years of SNL Music,” co-directed by Questlove and Oz Rodriguez, looks at the show’s rich history of musical performances, musicians doing comedy and comedians doing music; it opens with a long, artful mash-up/medley of performances that makes one glad to have been alive in its time, and just glad to be alive.
And on Feb. 16, NBC will air and Peacock will stream “SNL50: The Anniversary Special,” a three-hour prime-time event. It’ll be live, naturally.
Much about the show, which has been analyzed and reported on for half a century, is obvious. It isn’t always good — practically (or entirely) never through a whol.
