Tuesday, June 23, 2015

The League of Gentlemen was a documentary

Stephen Pemberton explains the roots of The League of Gentlemen in the Guardian today:
In a way, the League was railing against that very safe, cosy light-entertainment world; we loved the writing of Alan Bennett, Victoria Wood and the Saturday-night double bill of horror films. We brought that ear for dialogue and love of gothic horror together.
And Jeremy Dyson expresses surprise at the formula's success:
I don’t seek out the League to watch now, but occasionally I’ll catch a bit and I’m sometimes quite shocked! That something so strange somehow found an audience on the scale it did was always the thing that amazed us all.
I am not so amazed. Because, to someone who grew up in the provinces in the 1970s, it was not so much comedy or horror as documentary. Life as like that.

The Legz Akimbo Theatre Company, or at least a group remarkably like them, came to my school in 1974.

And one of the local butchers (he was a Conservative councillor when I was on Harborough District) hung rabbits and pheasants outside his shop as every lorry on its way from the West Midlands to Felixstowe rumbled past.

I am sure he would have sold you Special Stuff if you had asked.

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