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.
