Le club des gentlemen

My roommate's English girlfriend gave him a DVD of the League of Gentlemen. Being a huge fan of Monty Python (own the entire series on DVD), Black Adder (likewise), Fawlty Towers (likewise), and The Young Ones (likewise), I was greatly intrigued by the stories I had heard of this series. Then I watched it. Oh my goodness. When I first saw Monty Python, I thought it was bizarre. Then the Young Ones came along and upped the ante. But the denizens of Royston Vasey set the bar so high that I doubt it will ever be topped. Half the time you're watching LOG you're laughing because it's genuinely funny, the other half of the time you're laughing because you can't believe what you've just seen. This series is Stephen King meets the Twilight Zone meets Stanley Kubrick meets Monty Python. It's easy to be funny, and it's easy to be bizarre and sinister, but to combine them and be all of that at once is truly a feat of genius. So, providing you've got a taste for the dark and strange, settle down on the couch with a nice glass of "aqua vitae" and watch this series. Oh, and don't take your pet turtle to the vet.

The League of Gentlemen is one of the most consistently entertaining series of recent years. Without a doubt, its finest hour (literally) came in the Christmas Special. This hour-long TV movie is based on the Amicus "portmanteau" horror films of the 1970's (cf. Tales from the Crypt, Asylum, The Uncanny et al.). Typically, these films would see a host (generally Peter Cushing) encounter a series of hapless individuals who would relate their horrific experiences, before the "unexpected twist" framing-story climax. This Christmas Special sticks religiously to that formula, with lugubrious vicar Bernice lending an unsympathetic ear to cheese-dreaming Charlie, vagrant Matthew and incompetent vet Dr Chinnery. Each of the three tales is as darkly comical as we've come to expect from the League, with Charlie's tale mixing line dancing and voodoo, Matthew's tale spoofing Hammer vampire movies, Romero's Martin and German expressionist films, and Chinnery's tale a piece of classic Victorian melodrama involving a cursed pair of monkey's testicles. But what raises this special far above the level of a beautifully made and affectionate pastiche is that all the tales (and particularly the first two) are not only genuinely frightening, but more convincingly so than most of Amicus' own efforts. The gory, unremitting horror of the climax of Charlie's tale, and the truly creepy sequences set within the Lipp household in Matthew's story have a real power to them. And the final, terrifying twist - 'It's nice to see you again, all grown up...' - is one of the most disturbing moments in TV history (no wonder it ended up in Channel 4's Top 100 Scary Moments programme).

Lavish, dark and compelling, The League of Gentlemen Christmas Special stands alongside Threads and Ghost Watch as innovative and frightening television, and is perhaps the best one-off programme made by the BBC in the last decade.

This show is the most utterly fascinating program I have ever seen. It makes you gasp and want to look away from the screen, but you can't bear not to see the horrifying comical actions of the characters. It is terrific, and i would recommend it to everyone with that special wicked sense of humor.

90% of British sitcoms bore me to tears but when they're good, they are very, very good. This is one of the very best. L.O.G. has to be the most inventive and original comedy series I've seen since the heyday of 'The Young Ones'/'Comic Strip Presents', and personally I find it much more consistently funny.

Set in the bizarre, isolated Northern town of Royston Vasey, L.O.G. mixes classic surreal Brit humour fans of Python and 'The Goodies' grew up on with dark and disturbing touches closer to David Lynch. There are nods to 'The Wicker Man', 'Dr Who', Quatermass, 'Tales Of The Unexpected' and the like, so fans of weird 1970s TV and movies will get more out of this than those unfamiliar with the territory. A very strange mixture that works brilliantly. Black, eccentric and extremely funny. I'm hooked!

What a great great series. You know, there has never been anything like this and I don't think there ever will.

If I were to have been told about the project, I don't think I would have known what to expect. Imagine what the original script must have been like. With the finished product like this, imagine the creative process!!

But seriously, this is a unique product. I am not sure what these guys are on but it sure works.

The base of this series is that we all have our version of Royston Valley. The fact that it is a horrible place and the perfect setting for a horror story. To make it a comedy is a work of genius. It is one of the few programs that I can watch again and again.