The League of Gentlemen (comedy)
The League of Gentlemen are a troupe of
English comedy performers; it is also the name of their stage,
radio and
television series. The show, which is a cross between a
situation comedy and a
sketch show, details the bizarre goings-on in a fictional northern
English village, which in the radio series was called
Spent, and on television
Royston Vasey (the real name of comedian
Roy 'Chubby' Brown.)
The stage show began in late
1994, and it was not long before the team took as their name the title of a
Jack Hawkins movie,
The League of Gentlemen. In
1997 they were awarded the
Perrier award for comedy at the
Edinburgh Fringe Festival, and their radio series
On the Town with The League of Gentlemen, debuted on
BBC Radio 4. They won a
Sony Award for the first series. In
1999 the show moved to television and quickly acquired a cult following. There has been one six-episode series on radio and three on television, the first airing in
1999, the second in
2000 and the third in
2002. A Christmas Special was broadcast in December
2000, soon after the airing of the second series. Along with
The Fast Show, the series is credited with the revival of the sketch show format in BBC Comedy and its influence can be seen on the later series
Little Britain.
Filming took place mainly on location in the north
Derbyshire town of
Hadfield and consequently had no live audience. A
laugh track was added to the first and second series, but this was dropped from the Christmas Special and Series 3 when shown in the
UK. The group also took the show to Drury Lane in 2001, using a mixture of old and new material. In early 2005 a special one-off sketch was broadcast on the BBC for Comic Aid, a charity benefit for the
tsunami disaster. In this, two of the most popular characters, Tubbs and
Papa Lazarou, kidnapped
Miranda Richardson. A feature-length film,
The League of Gentlemen's Apocalypse, was released on
3 June 2005. The programme is produced in 16:9
widescreen, which means that some of the visual gags may be hard to spot in
letterboxed 4:3 format.
The
League of Gentlemen provided voices for the Vogons in the 2005 film
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. The three actors in the League (Gatiss, Pemberton and Shearsmith) also toured the UK from October to mid-December 2005 with a
pantomime-themed show "The League of Gentlemen Are Behind You".
The BBC has expressed interest in a fourth series, though the
Radio Times has claimed that there is little chance of this. Reece Shearsmith is more positive about the idea on the unofficial website, though he adds that any new series will not be set in Royston Vasey, as the group believes the village has exhausted its comedy potential. In any case, they have said that their decision will depend on critical reaction to the film and their second tour. It is unclear whether a fourth series would continue the style of the third series or return to the sketch-show format of the first two.
The League of Gentlemen is primarily a sitcom, albeit an unusual one. It consists of a series of sketches which come together to form an overall story. Since all the action takes place, and nearly all the characters live, in the same village, there is much overlap, and the events and characters of one story play a part in the lives of others, much as in a
soap opera. There is usually a main plot to which the minor stories tend to be tenuously connected.
In the radio series, the plot involved outsider Benjamin Denton visiting his aunt and uncle in Spent to be interviewed for a job at the local power plant. Not surprisingly, he missed the interview and was forced to stay longer than expected.
In the first television series, the main plot involves a new road being built straight through Royston Vasey, raising the possibility of great numbers of strangers visiting the town. The road development ends when Tubbs and Edward discover that the construction manager is their long lost son, David, and convince him to end construction and live "locally". The second series sees a deadly epidemic of nosebleeds grip the town's inhabitants, killing many. The plot is resolved after some confusion over the cause of the nosebleeds, involving Hilary Briss's "special stuff", Benjamin Denton's escape from his relatives, and the murders in the Local Shop.
The Christmas Special took the slightly different format of three self-contained stories, with three of the characters seeking the help of the
vicar, Bernice, on
Christmas Eve. The third series was different again, focusing on a different character each week but with the overlaps creating a more complex layering of the plot, more akin to a one-off episode of a situation comedy (albeit one where all the episodes come together at the end) than a traditional sketch show. The end of each episode features a motor accident, where a white van crashes into a garden wall. Some residents escape unharmed, whilst others are not so lucky. A red plastic bag is seen in every episode, suggesting that all the stories take place at the same time. All is resolved at the end of the final episode.
The majority of the inhabitants of the village — male and female — are played by
Reece Shearsmith,
Steve Pemberton, and
Mark Gatiss, and the script was written by these three, along with
Jeremy Dyson. Dyson, not an actor like the others, appears only in
cameo roles. As there are usually only three actors onscreen at any one time, the different characters mostly play out their own stories in several serialised sketches, rarely crossing into each others' storylines. Only rarely do actors "meet themselves". Exceptions include Papa Lazarou facing the Reverend Bernice in the Christmas Special (both Reece Shearsmith), Alvin Steele buying food from Iris at a supermarket checkout in Series 2 (both Mark Gatiss), and Herr Lipp meeting his creator, Steve Pemberton in
The League of Gentlemen's Apocalypse.
The series and film were directed by
Steve Bendelack and the theme tune composed by
The Divine Comedy's
Joby Talbot. The series has also garnered considerable critical acclaim, as well as a
BAFTA award, a
Royal Television Society award and the
Golden Rose of Montreux. In
2003, its creators were listed in
The Observer as among the 50 funniest acts in British comedy. In 2004 The
Radio Times listed
Papa Lazarou as the 8th funniest comedy sketch of all time (despite the fact that
Papa Lazarou is a character rather than a sketch). Despite the show's substantial critical acclaim, it has been branded with a
cult status as it has perhaps not achieved, and certainly has never maintained enough popularity amongst audiences, probably due to show's increasingly dark and sinister atmosphere. Because of the third series' sudden and radical change in format, viewing figures rapidly declined (even on the DVD commentary, the creators jokingly mention several times how nobody watched the series), although in parallel to this, reviews of the show were overwhelmingly positive.
The show has a great deal of dark humour, with many of the scenes inspired by horror films (the policeman who visits Tubbs and Edward in the first series is a reference to
The Wicker Man (1973)), documentaries (Dr Carlton came from a programme called "Change of Sex" which featured a "monstrously unsympathetic" doctor) and personal experience (Legz Akimbo came from the writers' experiences in amateur theatre, while Pauline Campbell-Jones came from Reece Shearsmith's own
Restart officer). Even the village sign is somewhat ominous, reading, in similar style to many hundreds of such signs throughout the UK, "Welcome to Royston Vasey. You'll never leave." In real life, Royston Vasey is the given name of comedian
Roy Chubby Brown, who makes several cameo appearances as the town's (characteristically) foulmouthed mayor. The "You'll never leave" derives from a faux-pas (albeit unintentional) from Gloucester Council, who wanted a change of image for the area after the
West murders and came up with "Come to Gloucester. You'll never leave."
The programme has notably high production values, with numerous detailed sets and complex character makeup, with particular attention paid to lighting and cinematography. The series is filmed on high-definition video tape, and post-processed to give it a high-quality film grain effect. A number of outdoor scenes (particularly the varied outdoor shots of the village shop and the intricate opening pan over the village) rival major motion pictures in terms of cinematography.
*
List of British sitcoms turned into films*
A Local Book for Local People (2000) London:4th Estate, ISBN 1-84115-346-X
The League of Gentlemen: The Scripts (2003) London: BBC Worldwide: ISBN 0563487755
The shopping channel presenter Alan Gear once made a guest appearance. Other star guest appearances include Christopher Eccleston (
Doctor Who 2005) in the last episode of series 3 and Roy 'Chubby' Brown, playing the Mayor of Royston Vasey.
*
The official League of Gentlemen site — www.ThisIsALocalShop.com*
Official BBC site*
A spoof website for The League of Gentlemen.*
Unofficial site*
Fan site*
Another fan site* McLean, Gareth.
Odd men out.
The Guardian. Saturday February 10, 2001. Retrieved May 20, 2005.
