Excellent Fun From the Noisiest Basement

The Wayne's World sketches on Saturday Night Live, chronicling the adventures of metalhead Wayne Campbell and his friend Garth Algar as they hosted a public-access television show from his parents' basement, ran from 1989 to 1994 (the character having originated on the CBC variety series It's Only Rock & Roll two years earlier), inspiring the surprise hit film of the same name in 1992 (by some distance the most successful film based on an SNL sketch) and its sequel a year later. Wikipedia's article on the sketches states the following:

In the United Kingdom, where Saturday Night Live is rarely shown, Wayne's World sketches were extracted from SNL broadcasts and individually packaged as 10-minute episodes which aired on BBC Two as part of the DEF II programming strand, simply as a tie-in with both Wayne's World movies.

But you're not happy just knowing that, are you?

DEF II was an early-evening programming strand aimed at teenagers which broadcast twice weekly between 1988 and 1994. It frequently featured American imports ranging from The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air to Mission: Impossible, and, yes, in 1992 the Wayne's World sketches were the first Saturday Night Live material to be seen on the BBC. Consulting BBC Genome, we can see that the descriptions of each broadcast in the Radio Times (Britain's premier TV listings magazine, for any Americans reading) were as follows:

1. 2 September 1992: The original sketches from America's famous Saturday Night Live TV series that inspired the teen film Wayne's World and countless catchphrases. It's bogus.... not!

2. 9 September 1992: More excellent fun from the noisiest basement in Aurora, Illinois. Join Wayne, Garth and a celebrity guest partying on down. It's all babelicious fun.... not!

3. 16 September 1992: More excellent fun from the noisiest basement in Aurora, Illinois. Join Wayne, Garth and a celebrity guest partying on down.

4. 23 September 1992: More fun from the noisiest basement in Aurora, Illinois.

5. 30 September 1992: More fun from Aurora, Illinois, as Tom Hanks plays Aerosmith's head roadie.

6. 7 October 1992: More fun from Aurora, Illinois. With actress Debra Winger.

7. 14 October 1992: More fun from Aurora, Illinois.

8. 21 October 1992: Mary Tyler-Moore is the new babe in the basement.

9. 28 October 1992: Last in the series from Wayne and Garth's basement.

As you can see, these listings range from "extremely helpful in working out exactly which sketch was shown that day" to "not helpful at all". The sketch shown on 30 September 1992 is quite clearly from the 17 February 1990 edition of SNL, the one aired the following week obviously must be from the 24 March 1990 show which was hosted by Winger, but two weeks later the mention of Mary Tyler Moore indicates that was the sketch from 25 March 1989. There were sixteen Wayne's World sketches at the time, and whilst some sketches being too tied to specific events might have been a factor, it seems like they just randomly selected nine and put them out in any old order.

There was a repeat run of the sketches in early 1993, now shorn of the DEF II block and airing late-night on Thursdays, described somewhat oddly as a "cult show from the US" by the Radio Times. This run lasts eight weeks:

1. 7 January 1993: Cult show from the US.

2. 14 January 1993: Cult show from the US.

3. 21 January 1993: Cult show from the US.

4. 28 January 1993: Actor Tom Hanks is the guest on the cult show from the US.

5. 4 February 1993: With actress Debra Winger.

6. 11 February 1993: Wayne discovers that Garth's mum is a "babe" in the cult US comedy show.

7. 18 February 1993: Mary Tyler Moore guest stars in the cult US comedy series.

8. 25 February 1993: John Goodman drops in on the cult US comedy show.

The running order doesn't quite match up with 1992, but it seems likely these were just repeats of eight of the nine sketches that had been shown the previous year, especially since this run was seemingly just to plug an awkward 10-minute gap BBC Two had in their schedule. (John Goodman was the guest on two different sketches, which were respectively part of the 2 December 1989 and the 1 December 1990 editions of SNL, and the sketch concerning Garth's mom was I believe from the 19 May 1990 show.)

The airing of these sketches also inspired the BBC to actually show full episodes of SNL, although this didn't last long: on 7 November 1992, they aired the Nicolas Cage-hosted episode which was the Season 18 premiere a month or two earlier in the US, and they continued airing Season 18 episodes on a weekly basis (including the infamous episode with Sinéad O'Connor as the musical guest!) for a month and a half before giving up, with the Michael Keaton-fronted episode being expressly billed as "the last in the series". Perhaps airing a topical show on such a delay just didn't work out, although both Wayne's World films did enjoy a number of showings on the BBC up until the early noughties, with the first one premiering in a good slot on BBC One over Christmas.

21/10/24 Update! I am immensely grateful to regular commentators Zoomy and Ed Jolley, who provided their memories of seeing the BBC airings of the Wayne's World sketches, plus 'inturnaround' on the r/LiveFromNewYork subreddit, who pinned some of those memories down to specific sketches, which have allowed me to put together this almost-complete episode guide:

SNL Sketch	DEF II broadcast	BBC Two repeat
25 March 1989 (Mary Tyler Moore / Garth’s dad reads ad for his store)	21 October 1992, eighth in the run	18 February 1993, seventh
13 May 1989 (Wayne Gretzky)	9 September 1992, second in the run	Unknown
30 September 1989 (Bruce Willis / Coolest Kid)	16 September 1992, third in the run	Unknown
2 December 1989 (Movie World / John Goodman) (probably)	Probably 28 October 1992, ninth in the run	25 February 1993, eighth
13 January 1990 (Ed O’Neill / Drunk Driving PSA)	23 September 1992, fourth in the run	Unknown
17 February 1990 (Tom Hanks / Aerosmith)	30 September 1992, fifth in the run	28 January 1993, fourth
24 March 1990 (Debra Winger)	7 October 1992, sixth in the run	4 February 1993, fifth
19 May 1990 (Candice Bergen / Garth’s Mom)	Probably 14 October 1992, seventh in the run	11 February 1993, sixth
11 May 1991 (Madonna Dream)	2 September 1992, first in the run	Unknown

I have assumed it was the first of the two sketches with John Goodman as Police Chief Wilson that was shown as the second sketch is a direct follow-up to the first, and is also substantially more risqué than the first one, probably too much so for a pre-watershed airing. I have also inferred the positions that sketch and the Candice Bergen one had in the original DEF II running order based on the order of the 1993 repeat run; that run must have skipped one of the first four sketches, but there's no way I can see to work out which one.

But once you have all the original dates for the sketches the BBC did air, and compare them to a list of all the sketches, everything falls into place. The very first sketch, from the 18 February 1989 show with Leslie Nielsen, was not included likely for reasons of content, but -- assuming I'm right about which Goodman sketch was used -- the BBC did then air the second through ninth sketches. If the second Goodman sketch was indeed skipped for content reasons, then the next two sketches from 19 January 1991 and 23 March 1991 were probably both deemed unusable for being too topical (the former was about the Gulf War and the latter the Oscars), leaving the Madonna sketch (the last from its respective season) as the final one available.

There were three Wayne's World sketches across the 1991-92 season. The first was from the season premiere and recapped the events of the summer, and the other two were both about the Oscars, so again were probably too dated to use. (Some of the various unused sketches were also cold openings, which might have further contributed to the decision not to use them as they couldn't be extricated from the rest of the show so easily.) So whilst the broadcast order was a bit muddled, there was nothing random about which sketches were used -- once they'd filtered out the unsuitable or unusable ones, the BBC actually aired every Wayne's World sketch they could have done at the time!