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

It lost half its audience in three weeks.

I still think it's pretty awesome. Creepy librarian and creepy Carrie rip-off are entertaining me. Why do you think people are switching off?

Not sure, but I lost interest after the first episode this year. It wasn't any worse or any less interesting, it just... I don't know.

It's certainly a slow burner, and the plot is all over the place, but this last week it seemed that the various strands are being tied together in a rewarding way.

Also, cosign on what was said upthread about comedy without any jokes. I always end up watching this back to back with that Stewart Lee show in iplayer, so I guess I'm primed for comedy without jokes.

The problem is less that it's "comedy without jokes" and more that it's comedy that isn't funny.

I think this might be the factor that isn't endearing me to this series as much as the last one. I know I was trying to defend it earlier, but there was a considerable lack of funny in the last episode.

I love how, even since LOG S1, their sketches and characters all seem like the premises to potential horror/shocker movies - a man who is kept as a scarecrow for cheating with the farmer's wife, a young fella who is kept against his will in a house by a cleanliness-obsessed couple.

I also liked in the last episode how they had a gay character unwillingly kissing a straight woman, but it was actually a drag scene. Same as LOG were the first to do a naked cross-dressing scene, and also the time they go to a gender-bending party, so you had men dressed as women dressed as men in a sex scene.

Yeh, it wasn't as funny, but as I say, I'm still enjoying it, and I'm still finding it interesting, but I don't think I find it especially funny, even when they drop in a terrible pun to remind you that its a comedy - "nazi-bay".

I guess it's what you're talking about, that weird intersection between normality and irrationality, which I suppose is why there's all these Lynchian nods everywhere, most explicitly in the silent singer. The drag adds to this sense of things not being quite right, of characters hiding a whole fucked-up identity behind their everyday existance. See also Lomax=Tony Hancock, Librarian being a bit gone-wrong, that woman marrying someone but not marrying them etc.

Also it feels like they're just trying too hard now.

I hope that's not the end of Silent Singer. Would love it if they had some sort of Silence of the Lambs type thing going on with the librarian.

I'm still enjoying it. Although one of the things I liked most about the first series (of Psychoville) was the "live" episode and the musical number because they didn't really need to be in there, but they did it anyway and it was great. Agree about the silly puns letting it down a bit- and would add Debbie's dumbness to that, last season her dumb jokes were awesome, like "winter beach" - they need more of that rather than just 'Is that a K or an H?'.

Season finale this week - shame it doesn't have a seventh episode. This series feels like it's only just getting going though. Think some of the story-telling could have been a little more succinct. The Silent Singer guy, great as he is, did basically the same thing for the first three episodes.

Much prefer this to the first series - less sketch-based, more plot-driven, more sinister, still makes me laugh out loud (mostly Mr Jelly and the old woman), though missing a set-piece as good as the Rope episode.

I don't think it's as good as the first, it's a bit all over the place and there are a lot of cheesy jokes. It's still kind of brilliant, however. So lovingly made, and so unlike anything else. The amiable Scottish assassin is a great piece of casting and deserves a mention.

Oh, and was very sad to see Tealeaf go.

New Shearsmith/Pemberton thing starting soon:

http://www.comedy.co.uk/guide/tv/inside_no_9/

horror europa with mark gatiss toninght bbc4

Watching it now. This Daughters of Darkness looks good.

I have never seen this show but I am currently staying in Hadfield where it was filmed

Avoid the local shops. They're for locals.

Don't use the butchers.

clicked to see if this was about Fripp's new wave band

Inside no 9 was very good, I thought.

Kind of wishing the LoG would get back together, maybe for a Halloween special or something.

Inside no 9 was very good, I thought.

Couple of dud eps, but the good ones were very good.

just realised i never saw the last episode.

Not great iirc.

The town is very striking, it definitely has a strong atmosphere, I can see why people might choose this location, I could also imagine it being used for an old Doctor Who episode

been catching up with s2 of Inside No 9 and it's up there with their best work. 12 Days of Christine is one of the best bits of UK TV I've seen in years.

that one was very Black Mirror, i thought.

yes. very much so. i kept forgetting i was watching I#9 in fact, but all the same I thought it was brilliant and much more convincing and affecting than any of BM.

Oh great, had no idea there was a second series. Thanks.

thursday's will be 2.04 (which means they are all still on iplayer if you're quick)

Episode one showing good form.

not seen that one yet.

Thought the first one on the train was mainly annoying but not a fan of the guest actors they had and some of the broad humour didn't work. The witchcraft one was ok but The 12 Days of Christine left me devastated, Sheridan Smith was amazing as usual.

Jesus that last one (ep 4)

I didn't think much of the Christine one but I think that was because I was trying not to blub and got annoyed with it for making me feel like that

The 12 Days of Christine left me devastated, Sheridan Smith was amazing as usual.

― ewar woowar (or something), Thursday, April 16, 2015 10:40 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Not even joking, I was mortally upset for the whole of the next day after watching it. I may have to re-watch it as it was one of the best bits of TV I've seen in years. And yes, Sheridan Smith is incredible.

oh i said that upthread.

Bears repeating.

some of the broad humour didn't work.

I like the fact that many of the jokes are broad and almost corny, it grounds their writing.

what is everyone's favourite LoG series? I think the Halloween special was the best thing they did but talking to someone the other day, we both agreed S3 is the best of the three series.

Nah, it's my least favourite, very clever but there's something too knowing about it and it's just less funny than the other two. Though I haven't watched it in years. S2 is the best I think.

Agreed that the special is superb.

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.