Snl Once again (but this time on purpose) Saturday Night Live is putting the Web to good use. SNL Backstage, a recent addition to NBC.com, gives viewers a glimpse behind the scenes, through video tours and interviews with producers and hosts, of television's longest running sketch comedy program. It's humorous. It's entertaining. It's the inside baseball of professional funny.

How appropriate. Audiences can't get enough behind-the-comedy-scenes these days. There's "30 Rock," of course, a television show about a television show that's chock full of that television show's alums. And there's the ill-fated "Studio 60" which, despite its failings, did a great job of showing how mediocre some of SNL's sketches are. If you've watched those shows, watching Backstage can be unnerving. Almost as if you've seen this reality show before, but with better lighting and more punchlines.

And isn't that surreal. SNL Backstage, a reality show mini-doc, has to nestle itself between fictional portrayals. Which makes some of the stranger shots -- at one point Chris Kattan walks by in a dominatrix costume -- seem less powerful.

The most entertaining clip (there are 13 so far, plus a trailer) is the one that feels the most surreptitious. We're privileged to see Andy Samberg meet Lili Allen with a handshake, then Drew Barrymore arrives to shoot a promo teaser for that week's show. The camera dwells on each actor, and on some of the supporting crew, but pans away each time the subject notices. Reality TV, without the aping for the TV. How uncommon when the event, not the fact that the camera is filming the event, is more important.

And then there's the moments when Barrymore and Allen break to giggle at Samberg's jokes. Those breaks are so much more intimate than a laugh track. So much more "real" (with air quotes).

When the actors are done filming they walk past the camera, which catches Lili Allen saying Samberg, as if she just realized, "You're funny."