In this March 4, 2017 photo provided by NBC, Colin Jost and Michael Che, right, appear during Weekend Update segment of "Saturday Night Live" in New York. (Will Heath/NBC via AP)
NEW YORK (AP) --
After 42 seasons, "Saturday Night Live" is trying something new: airing live to everybody.
For the first time, "SNL" will broadcast live simultaneously across the U.S. for its final four shows of the season, NBC announced Thursday. Until now, viewers in the Mountain and Pacific time zones have seen the show not as it aired "live from New York," but on tape delay.
The new live-for-all policy will apply to episodes telecast April 15, May 6, May 13 and May 20. Each show will air at 11:30 p.m. (Eastern), 10:30 p.m. (Central), 9:30 p.m. (Mountain) and 8:30 p.m. (Pacific). In the Mountain and Pacific time zones, the show will repeat at 11:30 p.m.
Hosts for these editions will be, respectively, Jimmy Fallon, Chris Pine, Melissa McCarthy and, for the season finale, Dwayne Johnson.
Ashley Walters, left, and Rosalind Eleazar pose for photographers at a photo call for the television series "Missing You," Wednesday, Nov. 6, 2024, in London. (AP Photo/Kirsty Wigglesworth)
It's Netflix's resolution every new year to give viewers a headscratcher in January.
Since 2020, the streamer has released a U.K. miniseries based on thriller book by Harlan Coben over the holidays. It seems to have paid off: "Fool Me Once," starring Michelle Keegan, Adeel Akhtar and Joanna Lumley, launched this past January and became what Netflix says was one of their most watched shows of the year, amassing 108 million views.
2025's seasonal suspense series is "Missing You," based on Coben's 2014 New York Times bestseller. It stars Rosalind Eleazar ("Slow Horses") as Detective Inspector Kat Donovan, a police officer who specializes in finding missing people — apart from the fiance that vanished 11 years earlier.
"They know Jan. 1 is the sweet spot for them," says actor Richard Armitage, who has appeared in each winter Coben adaptation, which relocates the stories from the books' America to the north of England. "People have ownership over the show now, so like, 'I want my Harlan Coben show on New Year's Day. Give me my Harlan Coben fix.'"
"It's perfect timing for the release, to be honest," says co-star Ashley Walters. "Most people are going to be hung over or, you know, just not have anything to do with the day."
The show opens with the shock of Donovan's ex-fiance (Walters) popping up on a dating app, over a decade after she came home one day to find him gone.
"I've ghosted people before," laughs Armitage. "Just people you don't want to talk to anymore. Not digitally though."
Another star, Jessica Plummer, isn't a fan of those who disappear without saying goodbye, though.
"I'd just feel too guilty," she admits, calling it "cowardly and lazy — sorry Richard!"
