The League of Gentleme DVD Comedy (2002) Mark Gatiss New Quality Guaranteed

Description

It’s Christmas time in Royston Vasey, the little northern town whose proud motto is ‘You’ll Never Leave’, and this special full-length episode has a darkly Dickensian yuletide flavour. We are presented with a complex tableau of stories delivered to Royston Vasey’s vicar Bernice by a variety of strangers who visit her church. In flashback we are shown the terrible secret behind Dr Chinnery’s always fatal attempts at veteninary surgery. Back in the present, and taking a sideswipe at Stanley Kubrick’s ‘Eyes Wide Shut’, the endlessly warring couple Stella and Charlie try to resolve their dysfunction, and Stella visits a strange masked group called ‘Solutions’ in the hope of using voodoo to get rid of her husband. Finally we travel back to visit a younger Herr Lipp, the vicious pederast, who is captured here leading a choir of small boys in the small German town of Duisberg; but what will he do to the young lad who asks if he may come to visit this Christmas?A Gothic-comedy masterpiece, The League of Gentlemen Christmas Special is a horrific anthology of three related stories, all set in Royston Vasey, which takes its inspiration as much from the writings of MR James and Edgar Allan Poe as the low-budget Hammer and Amicus shockers that the team parody so affectionately. The stories are all linked by the Dickensian device of Reverend Bernice receiving unexpected guests on Christmas Eve: the first concerns troubled married couple Charlie and Stella becoming unwittingly involved in voodoo and witchcraft; the second features the horrendous Herr Lipp in a Nosferatu skit that reveals the terrible truth about what really goes on in Duisburg; while the third, and best, tells of the horrible hereditary curse that afflicted Dr Chinnery’s great-grandfather. This one-off special distils all the League’s penchant for disturbing, twisted characterisation and macabre humour into a single hour; the result is one of the most daring “comedies” ever seen on British TV.
On the DVD: The League of Gentlemen Christmas Special on disc contains the hour-long main feature accompanied by a diverse and entertaining array of extras. There’s another illuminating group commentary; a 20-minute documentary “Tales from Behind the Crypt”, in which we get to see excerpts from the team’s first ensemble effort, “Highgate House of Horror”; a chat with composer Jody Talbot; and the League themselves “In Conversation” with Paul Jackson in the complete Radio 4 broadcast. A selection of out-takes, extended scenes, character biographies and a photo gallery are all worthwhile, but best of all is a Jackanory special with Mark Gatiss as the Victorian Dr Chinnery telling the Gothic tale of “The Curse of the Karrit Poor”, a spot-on Arthur Conan Doyle spoof. –Mark Walker