MALIBU, Calif. — During their lengthy runs on “Saturday Night Live,” Maya Rudolph and Fred Armisen created some of the sketch comedy show’s most outrageous characters.

Ms. Rudolph’s more memorable impersonations included a (very) platinum blonde Donatella Versace mangling the English language, Maya Angelou pranking Cornel West, and Oprah Winfrey making sweet, sweet love to a loaf of French bread. Mr. Armisen, meanwhile, performed comically lousy renditions of Hanukkah tunes; gave unwelcome sex advice, as Queen Elizabeth II, to Kate Middleton; and played hot potato with the decapitated head of a prep schoolboy. The two also performed together in several recurring sketches, channeling Beyoncé and Prince, Barack and Michelle Obama and the linguistically challenged art dealers Nuni and Nuni Schoener.

Now, more than a decade after Ms. Rudolph left the show, and five years since Mr. Armisen’s departure, they are back together, in the new Amazon comedy “Forever.” But this time, they’re playing a relatively normal married couple who argue about fork tines.

Their new show, which debuts Sept. 14 and is written and produced by the Emmy-winning writers Alan Yang (“Master of None”) and Matt Hubbard (“30 Rock”), signals a big leap from the pair’s sketch-comedy roots. Instead of playing a multitude of outlandish characters on a series with no discernible end (“S.N.L.” is entering its 44th season), the two play a single character each in a comedy capped at eight episodes.