'The League of Gentlemen' is a quartet of
British comedy writer/performers, formed in
1995 by
Jeremy Dyson,
Mark Gatiss,
Steve Pemberton and
Reece Shearsmith. The
television program for which they are best known, although officially labelled a
sitcom, was initially more
sketch-based, linked together by their common setting: the fictional
village of
Royston Vasey, set somewhere in the north of
England. The first series aired on
BBC Two in
1999, and follows the lives of dozens of the town's bizarre
inhabitants, played by Gatiss, Pemberton and Shearsmith in a number of different guises and make-up.
Past and future
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 this six-episode run. In
1999 the show moved to
television and quickly acquired a
cult following. A total of three series have been produced, 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. Its influence can be seen on later series, particularly
Little Britain (the first series of which was directed by
Steve Bendelack, and script edited by Mark Gatiss).
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, by inviting a studio audience to watch a playback of the completed episodes as well as the filming of certain interior scenes, such as the Dentons. The laughter track was dropped from the Christmas Special and Series 3 when shown in the
UK.
The group took the show on tour for the first time 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. Later in the same year, the League toured the UK with their new pantomime-themed show, ''
The League of Gentlemen Are Behind You'', which ran from
October to mid-December.
The fictional town of Royston Vasey
The League of Gentlemen also provided voices for the Vogons in the 2005 film
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
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 would 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.
In
September 2006, the unofficial website reported that The League of Gentlemen were to 'reunite' at the beginning of
2007, most likely to plan for the fourth series.
[1] Reece Shearsmith and Steve Pemberton appeared on
The Russell Brand Show at 11.30pm on
December 22 2006. When asked "Will there be any more of ''The League of Gentlemen''?", Shearsmith simply replied "Yes", but was quick to change the subject and not reveal anything about a new series. On the official website, Shearsmith's
blog entry for
May 23, 2007 stated that the entire troupe had recently met up in London's
West End: "We discussed our next project - it seems we have hit upon something. Early days - but exciting nevertheless."
[2]
Overview
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.
Series
★ 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' "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 white van crashing into a garden wall. Some residents escape unharmed, whilst others are not so lucky. A red plastic bag is seen being blown by the wind through the town in every episode, suggesting that all the stories take place at the same time. All is resolved at the end of the final episode.
Episode Guide
Main articles: List of The League of Gentlemen episodes
To date there have been three series, each consisting of six episodes, plus an hour-long Christmas Special. This makes a total of nineteen television episodes. There have also been two live shows (both of which were later released on DVD) and a feature-length film.
Characters
Main articles: List of characters in The League of Gentlemen
The League of Gentlemen have played in total nearly a hundred characters, many created in the early stage shows, others during the span of the television series and some specially for the team's film.
Actors
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 on screen 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). The idea is taken further in the
The League of Gentlemen's Apocalypse, when the characters meet the actors (especially when Herr Lipp meets his creator, Steve Pemberton).
Atmosphere
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.
It is notable that each series since the first has featured a progressively smaller proportion of jokes, focusing more on horror and drama. The third series in particular is notable for its absence of humour in many scenes. The League even comment on the DVD commentary that one scene involving Pauline and Ross was initially written without any jokes at all, so one was tacked on afterwards when they realised they had forgotten about it.
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.
The series and film were directed by
Steve Bendelack and the theme tune composed by
The Divine Comedy's
Joby Talbot. For the third series, Talbot revamped the theme tune, giving it a funkier feel.
Reaction
The series has 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 this substantial critical acclaim for the show, it has been branded with
cult status and has never achieved, or certainly never maintained, a broad popularity amongst audiences, probably owing to its increasingly dark and sinister atmosphere. Perhaps because of the sudden and radical change in format in the third series, viewing figures declined rapidly (even on the DVD commentary, the creators jokingly mention several times that nobody watched the series), although reviews of the show remained overwhelmingly positive.
Books
★ ''
A Local Book for Local People'' (2000) London: 4th Estate, ISBN 1-84115-346-X
★ ''The League of Gentlemen: Scripts and That'' (2003) London: BBC Worldwide, ISBN 0-563-48775-5
★ ''
The League of Gentlemen's Book of Precious Things'' (2007) London: Prion, ISBN 1-853-75621-0
Trivia
★ The shopping channel presenter Alan Gear once made a guest appearance.
★ Other star guest appearances include
Christopher Eccleston in the last episode of series 3 and
Roy 'Chubby' Brown, playing the Mayor of Royston Vasey (Royston Vasey is Brown's real name).
★ All three performing members of The League (Gatiss, Pemberton & Shearsmith) acted in different roles in the 1998 BBC television adaptation of
Mark Taverner's satire
In the Red.
★ There is at least one horror movie referred to in every episode.
★ The troupe is friends with
Edgar Wright, and cast members have constantly overlapped between their projects. ''League'' members appear in ''
Spaced'' and ''
Shaun of the Dead'' (and Gatiss appears uncredited in Wright's trailer for ''
Grindhouse'' as admitted by Wright
[1]). Conversely,
Simon Pegg appeared in ''
The League of Gentlemen's Apocalypse''.
★ While
Joby Talbot wrote the score for the television series, the eccentric theme music to the radio series ''On the Town with the League of Gentlemen'' was
Michael Nyman's piece ''An Eye for Optical Theory'' from the film ''
The Draughtsman's Contract''.
Links to real life
It is widely believed that a lot of the characters and indeed the town are based on Pemberton's home town of
Chorley, with Royston Vasey based on
Adlington, a village within Chorley Borough. The character of Herr Lipp is believed to be based on a headteacher of a certain Chorley secondary school. In the
DVD commentary on the second series, Pemberton and Gatiss state that Papa Lazarou's speech patterns are based on their former landlord, who would phone their flat and insist on speaking only to Steve. Mark Gatiss has said in interview that the local shop was inspired by a shop in the village of
Rottingdean.
[3] [4]
References
1. http://www.leagueofgentlemen.co.uk/newlatest.shtml
2. https://www.thisisalocalshop.com/blogs/entryview.php?Submit=View&Id=21
3. http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4158/is_20001004/ai_n14349336
4. http://www.guardian.co.uk/weekend/story/0,,435803,00.html
See also
★
List of British sitcoms turned into films
External links
★
This is a Local Shop.com - official website
★
The bbc.co.uk Guide to Comedy - article
★
Lunacynet.com - character index
★
mindthezap.tv - episode guides
★
British Sitcom Guide
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