Elton John Music:

		List Price: $4.97		Label: BBC Warner Salesrank: 58026 Released: October 24, 2000
		Our Price: $2.89
		Used Price: $2.14
		Media: VHS Tape

Editorial Review:
Are you local? You are if you know The League of Gentlemen, the award-winning team who burned the remote town of Royston Vasey into the psyche of a nation. In a tour de force that has been called "Monty Python meets Twin Peaks," three actors bring an entire community of hilariously inbred characters to life. Once you're hooked on The League of Gentlemen and Royston Vasey, you'll never leave.

EPISODE 1 - Welcome to Royston Vasey
Ben struggles to take in Auntie Val and Uncle Harvey's incomprehensible house rules, while Martin poses a threat to the precious things in Tubbs and Edward's Local Shop. At the local job center, Pauline is furious when someone lands an interview without her help. Taxi driver Babs makes middling progress through her sex change.

EPISODE 2 - The Road to Royston Vasey
The new road is good new for everyone except Tubbs and Edward. Pauline coaches a workshop in selling The Big Issue, and we meet butcher Hilary Briss, video hounds Henry and Ally, and the formidable Reverend Bernice.

EPISODE 3 - Nightmare in Royston Vasey
Tubbs sees a map and discovers the world beyond Royston Vasey. Pauline buckles under pressure in the interview techniques workshop, and a terrible discovery is made on the road building site.

Description of League of Gentlemen Vol 1 [VHS]:
In some grim and isolated corner of northern England lurks the town of Royston Vasey, where the local cab driver is a hirsute preoperative transsexual, the local butcher sells his special stuff to select customers, and the local employment counselor thinks people are like pens: "If they don't work, you shake 'em. If they still don't work, you chuck 'em away!" But if you're not local, you should steer clear of the local shop, no matter how tempted you are by its precious things.

To call The League of Gentlemen a black comedy would be an understatement. Its bleak humor owes as much to Samuel Beckett as it does to Monty Python, so those who like their laughs served warm are in for a shock. The show is the most wickedly inventive comedy to come out of Britain since Eddie and Patsy staggered onto our screens in Absolutely Fabulous, and like that groundbreaking series it proudly ignores the boundaries of good taste. Part sketch comedy, part bizarre soap opera, the narrative jumps back and forth between more than a dozen major characters, all played by the three performers who cowrote the show. These characters range from the odd--a vet who accidentally kills all of his patients--to the thoroughly disturbing, like Edward and Tubbs, the inbred proprietors of the Local Shop, who are willing to go to any lengths to prevent the building of a new road through their beloved town. You have never seen anything like The League of Gentlemen, but like butcher Hilary Briss's special customers, you're sure to be back for more.

This tape contains the first three episodes of the series: "Welcome to Royston Vasey," "The Road to Royston Vasey," and "Nightmare in Royston Vasey." --Simon Leake

League of Gentlemen Vol 1 [VHS] Reviews:
Hello, Dave? Wanna buy a peg?
2001-12-07 - Surreal, cruel, and devistatingly funny. Imagine Monty Python meets South Park and you getting close... sort of. League of Gentlemen is set in the small rural town of Royston Vasey, a fine example of isolated parochial culture rot. On the surface everything seems so quaint and charming. As the show progresses one thing becomes apparent, these people are really screwed up. Most of the people of Royston Vasey are character studies portrayed with biting wit. The acting and writing for this show are all top notch.
A word of warning: this show is not for everyone. You will either love it or hate it. I love it. I also like South Park, Strangers with Candy, and Ab FAb, if that is any help.

upt, one point for the British.
2001-07-26 - I caught this show on comedy central back two years ago, and I finally got a credit card to buy this! (first thing I actually used it on.) The TV show itself had me laughing for hours- days- no I'm still laughing. The only complaint I had was I did not realize this tape only had three episodes on it. I was left in my dark room trying to remember what happened. If you're going to buy this, make sure you pick up the whole series. It's worth every penny. The three "gentlemen" who act out these parts are perfect. Sometimes you wonder who plays who or if it is even one of the three. It'd take us Americans a team of 30 to come up with half of the things the four writers think up in one sitting. Hat's off to them all. And if you don't find it funny, then go back to watching friends.

Are you LOCAL?
2001-07-24 - So funny I fell off the couch laughing! The first time I ever saw this series was during a trip to the UK ... and the moment I got home I rushed onto amazon.com to see if 'The League of Gentleman' was available to the Canadian public. So absolutely hysterical I can't praise it enough!

Alot of Canadians familliar with 'The League of Gentleman' have compared it to 'The Kids in The Hall', which, by comparison, is really quite dull. "The Kids in The Hall' have never made me laugh so hard tears literally streamed down my cheeks. This tape is great because you get 3 episodes ... including the very first episode ... finally the mystery of how poor Ben wound up in Royerston Vasey is revealed! As well, Tubbs and Edward still remain at the local shop ... homicidal and twisted from the very start! Pauline at the job center is absolutley my favorite (next to Tubbs and Edward) and well ... it's better seen from the comfort of your living room to appreciate to it's fullest!

In the second episode we take a deeper look into the psyche of Tubbs and Edward (scary stuff!), and we meet Hillary Briss ... who I'm still not too sure about as far as his 'special stuff' is concerned!

In the last episode, a few loose ends are tied up (to say the least!) and somewhere, if I'm not mistaken, I spot Tubbs eating what appears to be a hair sandwich. As always, it's definately something no reviewer could possible do justice for ... it simply HAS to be watched ... over and over again! Even after seeing it again and again you'll still laugh till your sides hurt!

I would like to point out, however, that some people may not find this kind of humor to their liking. It's not exactly comedy by the usual North American standards ... and it's what has been described as 'dark humor'. If silly jokes about self-pleasuring techniques and mentally unstable naked people with homicidal tendancies don't put you off ... it's well worth the money!

Pushing the envelope...
2001-06-03 - Four (not three as publicity suggests) actors play almost all the characters in a tiny England town in this first of two volumes collecting the first 6 episodes of the BBC comedy.

Be warned that the humor almost always involves cruelty, to humans as well as to dogs and turtles. Even the funniest sequences have a sharp, hurtful edge. The acting is extremely good. In each episode we come back to various sets of two, three or four characters and see how their (hopeless) situations are evolving. A young hiker finds himself rooming with the most deranged and tight-haired married couple in all TV history. A community course in job hunting is populated by losers and retards, and taught by a fat psychotic who's never held a real job herself. An isolated store is run by two inbred maniacs who torture and kill any outsider uncautious enough to enter. A local vet kills all his patients through mindlessness. Three executives at the local factory have a beer or two at the pub of an evening, their enjoyment hampered only slightly by the fact that one of them is a sweating, red-faced sociopath who packs an automatic inside his suitcoat. A one-armed nutcase runs the local novelty shop, and nobody gets out without putting their hand in the... well, maybe you get the picture. The town's only cabdriver can't stop talking about the details of his sex-change operations. And so on. There are some genuinely funny things here, but most of the laughs are of the "gross out" variety, and not the fruit of any actual comedy writing or performance. In fact, most of the performances work on a purely dramatic level, rather than a comedic one. I sort of hope this is not the new direction for BBC comedy. There's a huge amount of talent here, but for laughs untinged with wincing, embarrassment and shock, we need to look elsewhere.

One episode at a time (don't try more than 2 in one session)
2001-04-19 - League of gentlemen is 5th generation Monty Python. Classic British humour not all will find palatable!! When I watched the first episode, I got the same buzz that The Young Ones/Python/Black Adder/Comic Strip/Absolutley Fabulous/Falty Towers/Vic Reeves... ETC. gave me. I wasn't sure whether it's humour would appeal to Americans. It appears the people who wrote it don't care about this sort of minor distraction. But after sending copies to my friends in the States. I've found out it does. It's dark, strange and challenging. It isn't the kind of comedy that is cleverer than it is funny. Trust me, It's funny.....that's the bottom line. Tread carefully....It'll blow your mind