The League of Gentlemen - The Complete Series 3
The third series ofThe League of Gentlementakes the portmanteau horror approach of theirChristmas specialand extends it daringly across the entire six episodes. Here, each half-hour installment is a self-contained story featuring various familiar and less well-known inhabitants of Britain's most accursed town, Royston Vasey. But each individual tale leads--horribly, inevitably--towards a single shocking event, the full circumstances of which are only realized in a final, macabre twist. It's all far too bleak to be called comedy, just too damn funny to be anything else. This is a team that has always defined its own rules, nowhere more boldly than here.Opening with a funky new theme song, the six episodes feature--among others--ex-con Pauline and Mickey in a touching tale of transvestitism; Lance, the one-armed comedy shop owner, yearning for a new limb; foul-tempered Geoff Tipps trying to make it as a stand-up comic in "Lundun"; some eye-popping fetishist behavior at the local B&B; seedy goings-on in the massage parlor; and, most horrendously of all, the dreaded return of Papa Lazarou. It all proved too much for some viewers--too grotesque, too offbeat, too surreal. Packed with knowing references to obscure movies and filled with the most unpleasant characters ever to grace a "sitcom," this is certainly an uncompromising series.--Mark Walker