A weekly topical sketch show is very hard to pull off, its written and rehearsed in such a short time its very hard to get it consistently good be it in this country or the US (or anywhere else for that matter). It not being on a mainstream channel is also a massive barrier to it being a big break though hit as well.

There have been very few decent sketch shows for a while because they cost too much when its way cheaper to shove 4 comedians behind a desk and have a quiz, or film some stand up that someone is going to do anyway. Which is a shame because they used to be great, Id put "A bit of Fry and Laurie" up there against basically any sketch comedy, but it took them ages to write and a fortune to film and while your getting 3 or 4 mill viewers you can justify that but nothing gets that these days unless you are strictly or the Traitors or something.

But IMO SNL just isn't good enough consistently. You would think in this world of clipped shorts where each sketch could be shoved on short form content algorithms you would have had more of an impact. but its not good enough.