Ant & Dec's Saturday Night Takeaway is a British television variety show, created and presented by Anthony McPartlin and Declan Donnelly (colloquially known as Ant and Dec), and broadcast on ITV. In the spirit of previous Saturday night light entertainment shows such as Noel's House Party, Opportunity Knocks and Don't Forget Your Toothbrush, the show has the titular presenters host various segments, focusing on a mixture of live and pre-recorded entertainment and quiz segments (a full list of which can be found on The Other Wiki), including an audience-based quiz involving the television adverts during a week's episode of one of ITV's programmes, and a competition in each series between the two presenters.
The programme proved an immense success for the broadcaster since its launch in 2002, earning multiple awards for both the show and the presenters. The show originally ended in 2009, but later got Un-Cancelled in 2013. Its success led to several international versions being created, though most have been short-lived, as well as a special mini-series of episodes involving an adventure of Ant & Dec, that were later broadcast as a special episode during the Christmas TV season. Since the thirteenth series, the programme airs its series finales in location outside of the UK, with the exception of the sixteenth series due to the 2020 coronavirus pandemic, and celebrated its 100th episode on 3 March 2018. The show will take a break after Series 20.
Spawned a spin-off featuring Stephen Mulhern's segment In For a Penny.
This show contains examples of:
- All or Nothing: Contestants for Win the Ads are offered the choice of taking the unknown prizes they had won (out of a potential 16, most don't make half in the time alloted) or answering one more question with all the prizes at stake.
- The Announcer: Typically, there's a guest announcer each week, usually there to plug any show's they're working on.
- Audience Game: Often happens on this show.
- Audience Participation: In spades. For a start, the Win the Ads contests are chosen from the audience.
- Bilingual Bonus: For the show's trip to Barcelona in 2014, the theme tune was rewritten in Spanish.
- The Finnish version of the show also provides Finnish-language lyrics to Huuma.
- Butt-Monkey: Stephen Mulhern. Whether he's hosting "Ant vs. Dec", "In For a Penny", "Win a Week Off Work", or he's cameoing during another segment, he's usually accompanied by Ant (and sometimes Dec) making jokes about him.
- Catchphrase: Don't just watch the ads...
- Audience: ...win them!
- "Run the titles!", used at the end of the Cold Open. Became an Abandoned Catchphrase after the Cold Open was removed, but was reinstated briefly for the 2023 finale.
- Christmas Special: The only one in the show's history was broadcast on Christmas Eve 2005.
- Clip Show: Due to COVID-19, Ant & Dec were forced to record the last two episodes of Series 16 from home, presenting various scenes from previous years.
- Consolation Prize: Win the Ads players who gamble and lose on All or Nothing typically receive an SNT-branded roll of toilet paper.
- Confetti Drop: The show adores this trope, especially in the revival.
- Covered in Gunge: Inevitable on this show. In 2024, a segment of a rebooted "What's Next?"note got them into this.
- Department of Redundancy Department: The "End of the Show Show".
- Dub Name Change: The segment "In For a Penny" was brought over to America for the 2017, 2018 and 2023 finales, where it was renamed "In For a Cent".
- Jokingly, at the start of the 2017 finale, Ant makes multiple jokes about how they can make the show understandable to Americans. "Saturday Night Takeaway" becomes "Saturday Night Takeout", and the "End of the Show Show" has turned into "The Super Awesome Hot Diggity Dog Bodacious Showbiz Slamdown" or something like that.
- Finale Production Upgrade: For the most part, the season finale would always take place outside of the studio. Some examples include the show going to Walt Disney World, Universal Orlando, and once on the MV Britannia cruise ship. This practise stopped after the COVID-19 pandemic, before being brought back after 2023.
- Game Show Host: Ant & Dec serve in this role for Win the Ads.
- Product Placement: All the prizes for Win the Ads. The prizes themselves are selected from a random ad break during an ITV show that aired during the week.
- Ripped from the Headlines: All the questions on Win the Ads are taken from that week's news stories.
- Station Ident: ITV's "Pugwash" ident made a cameo in the first episode of the revived series.
- "Staying Alive" Dance Pose: "Singalong Live" wouldn't be the same without a dose of this.
- Speed Round: Contestants on Win the Ads have 60 seconds to answer a maximum of 16 questions which each have a prize. As noted above, most are lucky to win 8.
- They're given 75 seconds if they're playing from home, to allow for delays; and for obvious reasons the audience aren't told what prizes they've won.
- Sound-Effect Bleep: Done for any time someone swears during the hidden camera or undercover segments. This happens a lot.
- Bonus points for a Logo Joke covering the offending mouth.
