'League of Gentlemen' Set Visit

We catch up with those strange fellows from Royston Vasey to find out how they plan to transfer their twisted TV characters to film.

Dec  2 2004

Prepare to be shocked, stunned and appalled as summer 2005 will see the 'League of Gentlemen' finally hitting cinemas in their first big screen adventure.

Re-creating characters that so traumatized the nation over the course of three twisted TV series, 'League of Gentlemen: Royston Vasey' (as the film is tentatively titled) has been filming for the last six weeks in Ireland, London and Hadfield, so Time Out's Tom Howard though it was about time he visited the set to find out what wickedness was afoot.

And it seems that Mark Gatiss, Steve Pemberton and Reece Shearsmith, the masters of the macabre who both write and star in the show, are going all-out with their first celluloid effort.

'It is an ambitious film', Pemberton told Time Out, 'we've got special effects, a historical side and a stop motion monster that comes in at the end.'

Of plot, the boys explained that three of Royton Vasey’s most popular residents (Geoff Tipps, Hilary Briss and Herr Lipp) come to the conclusion that they are fictional characters in a fictional world, and so head to London to face their creators head on.

'The whole thing is an essay on the unhappy nature of trying to do a TV spin-off film,' explained Shearsmith, 'but that makes it sound very cerebral when it's very silly more than anything else.'

And when Mark Gatiss describes the different influences and elements that make up the film, silly does indeed seem to be the name of the game: 'We've really just ticked all our boxes', he says of the film's eccentric storyline, 'The Dark Half' by Stephen King, a lot of spy stuff, messing around in grand seventeenth-century costumes, as ourselves in filthy tuxedos as in 'The Towering Inferno' and 'Jason and the Argonauts'. Amazingly, it all fits together. Honestly'.

Whether that's true or not remains to be seen, but with fan's favourites Edward, Tubbs, Pauline and Papa Lazarou all making appearances along the way, there can be little doubt that as well as being one of the most eagerly anticipated efforts of next year, 'Royston Vasey' will also be one of 2005's most downright distressing summer films. And for that we should all be grateful.

A full report from the League of Gentlemen's film set appears in Time Out London December 1-8 2004. Issue No. 1789.