Welcome back satire, we've missed you

Something peculiar has been happening in TV land of late: Saturday Night Live has actually become watchable.

I never really got SNL. I appreciate that it's a cultural institution in the United States, but it's always felt a bit like a bunch of college students doing a project for a "let's try comedy" class. Even when there have been people in it who usually crack me up (the show's alumni includes the likes of Dan Aykroyd, Bill Murray, Will Ferrell and Tina Fey), I've always felt thoroughly underwhelmed.

But now, in the last few weeks, it's started to make sense, with the impressions by Alec Baldwin and Melissa McCarthy in particular just the right mix of silly and scathing.