The League of Gentlemen

This series premiered on the cable TV station "Comedy Central" in the United States. It was chopped to death, and shown out of sequence. This was sad for the audience it should have attracted, it didn't and fell by the wayside. Luckily, at the same time my cable company went digital and I got the BBC. Thank goodness because I got to see "The League of Gentlemen" in order, complete and uncut.

"The League of Gentlemen" troupe is right up there with England's "Monty Python's Flying Circus" and Canada's "The Kids in the Hall". But..a warning.

"The League of Gentlemen" though are one step beyond. It's not only about dressing in drag and lampooning the cultural ills, it goes deeper and much, much, darker. I can tell many of you now -- it will offend certain groups of people, it will enrage others. But remember, its only comedy..dark, dark comedy. If that is not your thing, don't watch. If you think you KNOW dark comedy, watch this -- if you get angry and upset, then you don't quite know DARK COMEDY.

These guys got it right, and right on the button. They are brilliant, they are excellent and I enjoyed each and every character creation. There's a COMPLETE story that is told here from episode one to the end. You cannot watch this one episode at a time, willy nilly, that is one of the charms of this series. Watch it in order. See how creative and stylish and deeply disturbed these guys are. No one and nothing is out of bounds. That, my dears, is "dark humor". Bravo!

The League of Gentlemen are Jeremy Dyson, Mark Gatiss, Steve Pemberton and Reece Shearsmith. The latter 3 act and write while Dyson writes. In 1999 the quartet unleashed their eponymous TV series on us.

Every town has "odd" people – the suicidal army reservist, the toad fancier or the butcher who seems to take his job too seriously. And then there is that couple who keep themselves to themselves. And turn out to be brother and sister!

Roston Vasey is the real name of blue comic Roy "Chubby" Brown (who appears as the mayor in series 2). It is a mystery why the League chose his name as the fictional town in this series. But in Royston Vasey, being odd is the norm. With most of these characters played by the 3 acting Leaguers.

Series 1 is essentially a series of sketches set in "Vasey". Most of the characters do not interact other than in opening sequences although several are transported in the taxi of local transvestite Barbara. A very hairy man who is waiting for "the operation" and regales her customers with details of what is to come. This series is mostly offbeat comedy with a few blacker moments thrown in.

While there is a tenuous story holding series 2 together it carries on in a similar vein. Some sketches abandon the humour to explore a darker side. And the BBC makeup department are kept busy providing facial disfigurements for a number of characters. "Vasey" really needs a good dentist.

Series 3 is more of a "comedy drama". Each episode dealing with an individual character and a theme running through the end of each episode.

At first I was disappointed with series 3 as I wanted more of the same. The "best" characters are killed off and series 3 concentrates on minor players. On reflection though, each story stands up in its own right. A brave move which works.

Sick humour? Fantastic humour with good stories? The L of G pushed comedy in a new direction.

90% of British sitcoms bore me to tears but when they're good, they are very, very good. This is one of the very best. L.O.G. has to be the most inventive and original comedy series I've seen since the heyday of 'The Young Ones'/'Comic Strip Presents', and personally I find it much more consistently funny.

Set in the bizarre, isolated Northern town of Royston Vasey, L.O.G. mixes classic surreal Brit humour fans of Python and 'The Goodies' grew up on with dark and disturbing touches closer to David Lynch. There are nods to 'The Wicker Man', 'Dr Who', Quatermass, 'Tales Of The Unexpected' and the like, so fans of weird 1970s TV and movies will get more out of this than those unfamiliar with the territory. A very strange mixture that works brilliantly. Black, eccentric and extremely funny. I'm hooked!

The League of Gentlemen is one of the most consistently entertaining series of recent years. Without a doubt, its finest hour (literally) came in the Christmas Special. This hour-long TV movie is based on the Amicus "portmanteau" horror films of the 1970's (cf. Tales from the Crypt, Asylum, The Uncanny et al.). Typically, these films would see a host (generally Peter Cushing) encounter a series of hapless individuals who would relate their horrific experiences, before the "unexpected twist" framing-story climax. This Christmas Special sticks religiously to that formula, with lugubrious vicar Bernice lending an unsympathetic ear to cheese-dreaming Charlie, vagrant Matthew and incompetent vet Dr Chinnery. Each of the three tales is as darkly comical as we've come to expect from the League, with Charlie's tale mixing line dancing and voodoo, Matthew's tale spoofing Hammer vampire movies, Romero's Martin and German expressionist films, and Chinnery's tale a piece of classic Victorian melodrama involving a cursed pair of monkey's testicles. But what raises this special far above the level of a beautifully made and affectionate pastiche is that all the tales (and particularly the first two) are not only genuinely frightening, but more convincingly so than most of Amicus' own efforts. The gory, unremitting horror of the climax of Charlie's tale, and the truly creepy sequences set within the Lipp household in Matthew's story have a real power to them. And the final, terrifying twist - 'It's nice to see you again, all grown up...' - is one of the most disturbing moments in TV history (no wonder it ended up in Channel 4's Top 100 Scary Moments programme).

Lavish, dark and compelling, The League of Gentlemen Christmas Special stands alongside Threads and Ghost Watch as innovative and frightening television, and is perhaps the best one-off programme made by the BBC in the last decade.

British TV Comedy has a great tradition. We have the gentle sit-coms like Are You Being Served, The Good Life, Butterflies which seem to have gained a cult following in the US. Then we have the slightly more adventurous sit-coms like Porridge, Only Fools And Horses and One Foot In The Grave with their observations on real living that we can all associate with. We also have the sketch-type comedy such as Harry Enfield and The Fast Show which take characters we meet everyday and make them ten-times worse and funnier.

But every so often we British do what we do best and come up with something that simply removes all of the boundaries and is unique. The Goons, Monty Pythons Flying Circus, The Goodies, Not The Nine O'Clock News, The Young Ones....the list goes on. These programs often start off as small projects shoved onto BBC2 or Channel 4, but eventually they become part of our comedy heritage. However, its been a long time since we have seen something as unique and ground-breaking as this one - its simply the best and most original comedy series for over a decade.

If you are not British and your vision of British comedy is Are You Being Served and Benny Hill, prepare yourself for a shock because gentle slap-stick this is not. The League of Gentlemen is very, very dark - there's very little feel-good about this comedy - and it is extremely surreal, but it is also immensely funny. The series follows the exploits of the inhabitants of a small Northern village called Royston Vasey (the real name of Roy Chubby Brown, a particularly x-rated British comedian). The show gives Royston Vasey an almost mystical air, as if seperated from the rest of the real world, a place where anything can happen and the unexpected always does. The characters are cleverly worked so that despite their grotesqueness, you can still associate with them and in some cases sympathise with them. All of the main characters (even the women, in true Monty Python style) are played by three of the four writers (Gatiss, Pemberton and Shearsmith), and every character is an absolute gem. To tell you about the characters would spoil the fun of finding out for yourself. What I will say is don't expect any happy endings or moralistic enlightenment in this show, because there aren't any...but do expect shocks, things that will make you whince and some genuinely funny moments. Also concentrate through the opening credits as the camera takes you around the town, because there are some excellent visual gags in there.

This is a truly wonderful and original slice of British humour. It won't be to everyone's taste, but to those that appreciate this style of humour, you cannot get any better than this. I can see this being viewed as a classic in years to come - lets hope it awakens some new and innovative comedy writing in the near future... we've waited long enough.