I may be missing the point, but I just wish they'd stop banging on about head-cases & serial killers (Psychoville)

Member Name: worst_trip

Product:	Psychoville
Date:	24/07/09 (56 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: It is not nearly as bad as 'Little Britain'

Disadvantages: It is not even as good a comedy series as 'Benidorm' (which also has Steve Pemberton in it)

I don't quite see how a team of comedy writers as talented as the guys behind the long, lamented TV series 'The League of Gentlemen' can have gone from the likes of the sublimely-scipted 'yes, Mrs Levinson' routines to, well, the gratuitously grotesque, cliche-ridden tat I saw last week featured in the BBC2 series 'Psychoville'.

Have the people responsible for this been taking their lead from the bafflingly successful TV series 'Little Britain' - which itself was a blatant, unnecessarily cruel rip-off of the 'League of Gentlemen' series? The inexcusably awful 'Little Britian' featured a cast of 'comedy grotesque' characters who were subjected to mean-spirited, mercilessly spiteful - and actually, over-ridingly humourless - ridicule each week on account of their appearance / behaviour / physiological difficulties. The mentally-challenged old lady from 'Little Britain' who wet herself constantly, for example; I still can't believe we were all supposed to laugh at that. But I find the overall tone of 'Pyschoville' is much more in that vein than it is from the original 'League of Gentlemen' which, though it certainly featured a cast of highly unusual characters, generally dealt with them with surprising sympathy and humane-ness throughout.

Some of the regularly-appearing characters I saw in last week's episode of 'Psychoville' were as follows. There was a pair of co-joined twins who have personal hygiene problems, one of them that big lass off the 'Katherine Tate' show. Are co-joined twins - even smelly, tracksuit-wearing ones - as a subject for comedy still 'edgy' or 'radical' enough any more, given that such people are even featuring as characters in mainstream Hollywood movies these days? Then there was yet another batch of sinister circus /panto(?) performers, including Christopher Biggins as head clown. Yeah. We get it. Over-the-top clowns are inherently a bit sinister, aren't they? But everyone from Stephen King to Terry Pratchett - including of course, the 'League of Gentlemen' writing team themselves in their better, quality script-producing days - has been banging on about that for ages. Scarey clowns is not exactly cutting edge, is it? Then we had Dawn French was a psycho Mum-wannabe type, a bit like the nightmare pregnant lady who was in the Christmas special of British version of 'The Office,' only we saw her here in a Roald-Dahl-esque skit straight out of - I mean, directly lifted from - Ray Bradbury. An homage it was not, because it was Dawn French involved, for fecksakes. Dawn French! I mean, Dawn French. Enough said. The icing on the cliche cake appeared to be some joking about 'little people' and the relative size of their male members - but that was before the team went into their all-singing, all dancing serial killer night-in-the-waxworks-museum routine. Like 'Springtime for Hitler' only even less intentionally funny / disturbing. I haven't seen the prequel to the 'Silence of the Lambs' flicks but suspect they could've played the adventures of young Hannibal Lecter more successfully for laughs.

Yes, all in all worst_trip sees you, Reece Shearsmith & Steve Pemberton, and she's disgusted with you.

I don't know where it all went wrong, really. I still think the first two series of 'League of Gentlemen' count some of the hands-down, best telly programmes I've ever seen, ever - and so perhaps it is unfair to compare 'Psychoville' with what these guys are capale of producing on their good days. There are still odd highlights certainly - the previous week's episode for example, which had no Christopher Biggins, Dawn French, or anyone in it but the three 'League of Gentlemen' regulars was definitely above average. It focussed entirely on the series' best written and acted character - a middle-aged cardigan-wearing serial killer who still lives with his equally deranged Mum, and was really rather good - but occasional points of brightness aside and even given the most level of playing fields, this series as a whole is looking decidedly below-parr.

Summary: Best home-grown comedy series on TV at the moment, but this isn't saying much