The League Of Gentlemen sketch troupe back on TV screens after 15 years
It may be 15 years since The League Of Gentlemen was last on our TV screens, but really, not much has changed.
OK, the fictional Northern town of Royston Vasey in which the show is set faces being expunged from the map.
Oh, and there’s an overriding theme of mortality hanging over the characters - and creators - seeing as, well, they’ve all inevitably aged.
But for Mark Gatiss, Steve Pemberton and Reece Shearsmith, the joy of writing and performing the cult comedy remains exactly the same.
The dynamic trio tell us how the three specials, about to air on BBC Two, came about.
The old friends haven’t exactly been lying low since the TV series ended - in fact, their careers have soared.
Gatiss went on to star in and write for huge shows such as Doctor Who and Sherlock, while Pemberton and Shearsmith found success together with their hilarious anthology show, Inside No. 9.
But after talking for ages about a reunion, the four-man troupe — there’s a non-performing member in the form of Jeremy Dyson - made sure they set aside time to work together again.
“We didn’t want to feel like a Nineties band getting back together,” insists 51-year-old Gatiss of their comeback. “But the lovely thing actually is that we are doing it because we want to, not because we have to.”
He continues: “The thing that finally made a difference was the question, ‘Oh, I wonder what
happened to...?’ That’s the logical question which takes care of a lot of it. That immediately gives you somewhere to go.”
The League Of Gentlemen follows various bizarre characters living in Royston Vasey, and previous series saw locals face dramas such as a nose-bleed epidemic.
Gatiss says they wanted another simple running storyline for the specials — hence the existence of the town being under threat.
“I was reading about the Boundary Commission in the paper, and it was there in the back of my mind that a lot of places are up in arms that they’re going to be incorporated into other towns,” adds in Pemberton.
“People are generally very proud of their little plot of land and the name of it. So we wondered what the Royston Vasonians would think of that.”
So, that was the theme of the episodes decided. Then came the slight challenge of deciding which of their dozens of characters they would include in the three half-hour episodes.
“We do return to Geoff, Mike and Brian,” reveals 48-year-old Shearsmith, “and I’ve always enjoyed doing the character of Geoff, because he’s just me, thinly disguised.”
We also get to catch up with old favourites such as Edward and Tubbs, the Dentons and Legz Akimbo, to name a few.
You have to wonder if returning to their unique style of humour caused any difficulties when writing - but Shearsmith says it’s still easy knowing when they have gone too far in certain scenes.
“I think we have always been very diligent about how we do that and about how we shock — if we do shock - and what line you cross,” he elaborates. “We learned very early on that we have a responsibility as we are piped into people’s homes.”
What with it being such a long time since any of the four wrote sketches about the prolific much-loved characters, Shearsmith admits they are aware that some fans might be disappointed.
“Of course, even if this was better than the original League Of Gentlemen, there’d be some who would say, ‘They should never have done it and it’s terrible now’,” he continues. “Because to them, it’s in aspic as this brilliant thing and you meddle with it at your peril.”
Obviously the world of TV has changed a lot in the last decade and a half, and asked if the show would be commissioned now as a fresh series, Pemberton is unsure.
“The sketch show, which is what The League Of Gentlemen essentially was in its first incarnation, is really a dying art form in television,” he explains. “It’s a real shame, because it’s how you learn your craft as a writer.”
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