CLASSIC TV
Local legends…
1999-2017 AVAILABLE ON DVD, DIGITAL, iPLAYER
Welcome to Royston Vasey. You’ll never leave!’ reads the sign that ‘greets’ arrivals to the fictional setting for one of the most intoxicatingly dark comedy series to ever grace TV. Part bucolic promise, part simmering threat, the sign offers the perfect summation of a place where the mundane and the macabre meet.
The brainchild of the four-man comedy troupe (writer Jeremy Dyson and writer-performers Mark Gatiss, Steve Pemberton and Reece Shearsmith) whose name it adopted, The League of Gentlemen got its start as a stage sketch show before moving to radio in 1997. The jump to TV two years later saw a further evolution of the format, anchoring individual skits to ongoing narratives while also allowing its creators to pay greater homage to their inspirations. ‘Tonally [they’re] all over the place, the original shows,’ said Shearsmith in 2017. ‘They are clearly [made by] four young men who’ve been given a television programme and all their influences and things they love are just in it.’
In lesser hands, this could have been incredibly alienating for those unfamiliar with the material being referenced. But the show’s homages were never the whole joke, just additional layers of entertainmentboth for them and us. What really made The League of Gentlemen so memorable were the
