The League of Gentlemen

The League of Gentlemen is an extremely funny television program set in the town of Royston Vasey. Inhabitated by a town of surreal characters with very few females actually in the program as the majority of female characters are played by men.

Character list

• Edward and Tubbs - They run the local shop for local people (there will be no trouble there). Unfortunately the local shop is in a field quite far outside Royston Vasey. Although there is a nice view.
• The Deton Family - Be afraid of the evil twins, they are scary.
• Dr Chinnery - A vet, just don't let your pets anywhere near this man
• Pauline - A complete psycho Job Centre worker, don't mess with this woman, she will taken extreme measures.
• Barbara - Barbara is a taxi driver, a transsexual one, due to her sex change operation going slightly wrong.
• Papa Lazarou - He has a freak circus, but the inhabitants of Royston Vasey scare them away. "You're my wife now Dave".

Strange Events

The main storyline is the mysterious nose bleeds that leads to the possible death of Edward and Tubbs. Have to wait to series 3 to find out what happens next though. Other storylines include the possible linking of Royston Vasey to the outside world by a main road.

The television series was given glowing reviews on its initial appearance about three years ago. It explores the lives of the inhabitants of Royston Vasey, an insular and foreboding Yorkshire village, filled with deranged and sinister characters. The cast regularly appear in drag and hideous makeup prosthetics, and are clearly influenced in no small part by The Kids in the Hall.

TV critics made much of its 'dark' style, which revolves around an ensemble of grotesque characters performing increasingly frantic and unhinged setpieces, often involving violence, gore and that comedy favourite of pretending to be a bit mental. In the first series this material (which offers little scope for character development or subtlety) was interspersed with some slower scenes (such as the Job Centre sketches, Creme Brulée, and the excellent Video Shop Teenagers) and a loose plot involving rum goings on in the local butcher's. It wasn't always pleasant viewing, but it was very enthusiastically ridiculous and was capable of raising some laughs.

Unfortunately, success went to the cast's heads. The second series, assured of a warm critical reception and video release, was incredibly lazy. The show reached its nadir with the 2000 Christmas Special, which I was unlucky enough to catch the first few minutes of. The show was by this stage fixated on unlikely male homosexual relationships (purely as a device to belittle the characters and indulge in artless double entendres), fat women, spiteful "offensive" jibes (that only served to make the cast look more pitiful), and endless, miserable scenes of non-sensical violence that descended far below slapstick.

"If David Lynch wrote sketches, they'd come out like this."
London Evening Standard

The League Of Gentlemen are four comedy writers who specialise in dark, surreal and often tastless material that has the advantage of being exceptionally funny. To cut down on confusion, their TV series is also called The League of Gentlemen. They are:

Jeremy Dyson (writer)
Mark Gatiss (writer and performer)
Steve Pemberton (writer and performer)
Reece Shearsmith (writer and performer)

They met while studying at Bretton Hall in Leeds, UK - Mark, Steve and Reece were studying drama and Jeremy was reading philosophy. It's worth noting also that they write together in pairs, Steve with Reece and Mark with Jeremy.

Before the television series was commissioned, even before Royston Vasey, The League of Gentlemen presented their nightmare vision of smalltown life to listeners of BBC Radio 4 from the fictional northern hamlet of Spent under the name of On The Town with The League of Gentlemen. Most of the characters made familiar by the television version (ironically, since the radio episodes came first but then few people keep their eye on radio comedy output) were present including Pauline, the over-vicious Restart Officer at the Job Centre, the exacting, toad-loving Dentons, the well-meaning but ultimately hapless town vet Dr. Chinnery and the transsexual taxi driver Barbara, perpetually in the process of a difficult sex change. Notably absent are the local shop owners, Edward and Tubbs, represented instead by the diminutive Mr. Ingleby who refuses to let the differences between his height and the height of the shelves get in the way of serving the locals with groceries. "Can you lift me up?".

It's become something of a cliche, like seeing a film and maintaining that the book was better, to bestow the same superiority to the early radio versions of popular television comedies. And yet the cliche can't be fully applied to The League since the show format on each medium is kept strikingly similar so there's good and bad things to be said for both. A few new characters were introduced for the television, just as some were dropped during the transition but the basic idea of ignoring the standard one-story-per-episode plotlines in favour of interweaving stand-alone sketches remained perfectly intact. It wasn't broke, so it didn't get fixed. Of course, it being radio, visual gags are an impossibility but the use of sound effects (particularly on Dr. Chinnery's segments) were simultaneously suberb and utterly, utterly gross.

Wisely cashing in on the success of the Telly League, the BBC released the On The Town League as part of the BBC Radio Colection sometime in early 2000. Also, given that The League Of Gentlemen are a comedy troupe first and foremost, they've embarked on a live tour, releasing the inevitable video stroke DVD choice along the way.

episode guide

Halcyon radio days.

1. A Guest At The Dentons 6th November, 1997
2. Death By Mau Mau 13th November, 1997
3. Go To Joan Glover 20th November, 1997
4. Gunpowder, Treason and Plot 27th November, 1997
5. A Kind Of Loving 4th December, 1997
6. God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen 11th December, 1997

Television season one.

1. Welcome To Royston Vasey 11th January, 1999
2. The Road To Royston Vasey 18th January, 1999
3. Nightmare In Royston Vasey 25th January, 1999
4. The Beast Of Royston Vasey 1st February, 1999
5. Love Comes To Royston Vasey 8th February, 1999
6. Escape From Royston Vasey 15th February, 1999

Television season two.

1. Destination: Royston Vasey 14th January, 2000
2. Lust for Royston Vasey 21st January, 2000
3. A Plague on Royston Vasey 28th January, 2000
4. Death in Royston Vasey 4th January, 2000
5. Anarchy in Royston Vasey 11th February, 2000
6. Royston Vasey and the Monster from Hell 18th February, 2000

Christmas special.

1. Christmas In Royston Vasey 27th December, 2000

Television season three.

1. The Lesbian And The Monkey 26th September, 2002
2. The One-Armed Man Is King 26th September, 2002
3. Turn Again Geoff Tipps 3rd October, 2002
4. The Medusa Touch 10th October, 2002
5. Beauty and the Beast (Or, Come Into My Parlour) 17th October, 2002
6. How The Elephant Got Its Trunk 24th October, 2002

awards

A bunch of them. As well as scooping the Perrier Award for 1997, the radio series picked up a Sony Silver Award for best comedy in 1998, and the television series has managed to top up the trophy cabinet with a BAFTA for Best Comedy Program or Series in 2000.

sources:
www.angelfire.com/pq/radiohaha
www.tvtome.com