The League of Gentlemen - C/D? (now with added Psychoville)

S2 is great. It has Lazarou in it for a start and it's less reliant on sketch-show gross out humour than the first one. I like S3 as a hauntological celebration of 60s/70s British TV and film. In retrospect it was a very deliberate move away from make-em-laugh comedy stylings and more towards a 'weird tales' thing with big doses of black humour inserted. Each episode is memorable and iconic in its own way - the massage parlour, the joke shop owner with the phantom arm, the charity shop ladies, Daddy, the Lesbian and the Monkey, Geoff Tipps in London etc... And I think they perfected that Lynch vs British Lion vibe they'd been hinting at properly on that one.

S1 and S2 are inseparable, watched S3 recently and it was better than I'd remembered but still not as good (the episode with the arm transplant was probably their nadir). Can't remember the Halloween special!

Halloween Special-S3-S2-S1 - love the brutal despatching of their signature characters at the start of S3.

The laugh track and occasional wobbly set in the first two somehow add to the grubbily nightmarish atmosphere, like you've accidentally tuned into a really dark lost episode of Are You Being Served.

Yeah the wholesale ditching of laugh-tracks in alt comedy shows circa the late nineties was likely an important factor in the shift in tone on S3. I remember hearing the guys speak about S2, they were forced to insert a lol every couple of lines and also to act in a way that left space for the laugh track while filming.

S1 vs S2 depends where you come down on Edward & Tubbs vs Papa Laz I think. I could definitely come round to thinking S3 is the best tbh, I love Dean Tavalouris and Turn Again, Geoff Tipps might be the single best episode of any of them. Special mentions also to Glenn Tillbrook and Barry Baggs, the debt collectors, and Terry Lollard the door-to-door Christian. Comparison to British exploitation cinema otm.

But then I also think the film is secretly pretty good.

it's def worth a watch IIRC but it's been a while since I saw it.

One of my favourite LoG moments is squirreled away as a bonus on their first live DVD. It's an audio sketch in three parts called 'Big Woman' consisting of a man with a foreign accent leaving increasingly frustrated messages on his lover's answerphone. I'll see if I can find it online somewhere.

Fuck, I always forget they did a film.

Which actually has 83% on RT. I should watch it.

It was a Christmas special

no the christmas special was something else. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0435687/ LOG Apocalypse was a post-modern swansong for the series.

Please point me towards this Halloween special because if it exists I've never seen it

There's a Halloween special of Psychoville if that's what you mean?
God I haven't watched LOG in ages, must do something about that

The witchcraft one was ok

I loved this one! Really fun dialogue, and Shearsmith in particular was excellent.

I'm sure they've done that 'starting from... now' joke before but I enjoy it every time

Must say, I'm getting a bit weary of seeing Shearsmith depicting "unlikely" psychopaths. He was excellent in the murder-drama, The Widower, but he incresingly seems to be typecasting himself into this role.

S1 and S2 are inseparable, watched S3 recently and it was better than I'd remembered but still not as good (the episode with the arm transplant was probably their nadir). Can't remember the Halloween special!'

Spent the last three weekends watching all 3 LoG series in order and, tbh, S1 > S2 >>>>> S3. S3 is still funny but the one armed man episode is shite and the last episode isn't much better. Some prime dog latin codswallop (bless 'im) on this thread.

I also rewatched them all not long ago and s3 was completely awful.

yup, reading this thread also inspired a rewatch of S3 (I've seen the first two many times)

it's dire

i haven't seen it in ages. It felt quite adventurous at the time - the idea of 6 storylines converging, a skew towards dark drama as opposed to LOL comedy, a development of characters who had originally started out as slapstick one-jokers. It's clear they wanted to go further in that direction with Psychoville and even more-so Inside No.9. That said, I'm trying to think of some really good memorable moments and they're not really coming to me. Maybe this kind of thing has become more prevalent, more clever in recent years, and this has aged badly by comparison.
Is there any artform that ages worse than TV comedy though? I tried watching the Fast Show again recently and it failed to raise so much as a chuckle. Red Dwarf on the other hand still has something about it that works extremely well.

Was very disappointed by 3 at the time, haven't bothered/dared to rewatch since, though I have the complete LoG box set sitting on my shelf.

I thought the Geoff episode in S3 was good, and liked Dean Tavalouris, but that was about it.

I can't believe S3 was as long ago as 2002. The only series not to include a laugh track. Dean Tavalouris was pretty good. The scene in the cafe. In retrospect the bookending episodes were good; the other episodes had their moments. Even the One-Armed Man episode had Steve Pemberton's all-too brief appearance as a car mechanic. I liked the old ladies in the charity shop; Geoff Tibbs on the tube; Stella and Charlie bickering over the Gypsy Kings; the Ross, Pauline and Mickey episode in general. It was a pretty brave break-away from the existing sketch format, but it's been topped since then many a time, and dark comedy-dramas have become a staple fixture on TV since then.

It was a pretty brave break-away from the existing sketch format

Brave is not a word I would use about some TV comedy tbh, S1 and S2 had already broken with existing sketch formats fairly radically in any case. S3 didn't even have the courage of its convictions so shoehorned some 'sketches' in in case you were getting bored with the central story - and these were often the best things in the episode, e.g. Barry Baggs and good old Legz Akimbo.

I really liked season 3, it used to be my favourite but I haven't seen them in years.

xp forgot about Barry Baggs

Enjoyed the latest Inside No. 9 except maybe for the last few minutes
Not sure I'll be watching In the Night Garden in the same way from now on (Derek Jacobi narrates)

Enjoyed the latest Inside No. 9 except maybe for the last few minutes

It was certainly one of their more unpleasant endings. Fairly effective though, I'm still thinking about it twelve hours after watching it. Everything up to the last thirty or so seconds was essentially an elaborate piece of misdirection - would probably benefit from a rewatch. Good, I thought.

I don't think they made it clear enough in the final scenes that it was supposed to be a police interview and not a directors' commentary

That was the punchline though!

yeah, it went over my head. i think it's because the other person in the room was sort of laughing and agreeing with Jacobi in earlier scenes, so it didn't come across quite right.

still, there was a lot to enjoy about the episode. felt like the 'punchline' (no matter how it was executed) was unnecessary really.

the '12 Days of Christine' is one of the best LOG-related things. Might be one of my favourite 30 mins of TV ever, in fact.

I found the 'punchline' abundantly clear (watched it on my own though), and it made the whole thing a lot more interesting/scary than the mere well-executed, weirdly specific spoof it had been before.

everyone should be watching Inside No.9. Riddle of the Sphinx was especially smart

Didn't know it had started again tbh.

confusingly they've included the christmas episode as part of season 3 so the episode numbering is a bit odd. i think last week's (empty orchestra) was the 3rd, but labelled as episode 4.

https://twitter.com/Markgatiss/status/855730647041798144

scroll to the bottom:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/mediacentre/latestnews/2017/bbc-two-edinburgh

(three new shows have been commissioned for 20th anniversary)

aforementioned 3 new shows are 18th, 19th, 20th on bbc2 (ie tomorrow)

Hereford has a new link road opening tomorrow, the day of the first episode. It is called New Road.

Today ykwim

Ok so they doubled down on the Barbara stuff in a really unfortunate way

oh no

(not that I'm that surprised unfortunately but that really sucks)

Yeah that was a bit awkward.

Other than that fine - not embarrassing, not brilliant. Tubbs and Edward still the funniest.

Jeff and the whiteboard was the prime moment for me. Otherwise a bit up and down to be honest. Nothing dreadful but sight gags still maybe the best part.

It was more or less 100% greatest hits fan service, but about as enjoyable as it could be for being that.

Bingo caller tonight was superb.

Felt very much like it might have worked better as the first third of a feature length special - there was a lot of setup to not much payoff. Enjoyable enough though.

Really wasn't sure about where they're going with Pauline (the one transcendent character they've created) but they've got exceptionally good at twists with Inside No. 9 so I'm prepared to give them the benefit of the doubt here.

Much better tonight than last night for sure.