On the Town with The League of Gentlemen

A young man arrives in the northern town of Spent, planning to stay for just one night with his aunt and uncle before attending a job interview the next morning. It will be several weeks before he leaves the town in the final episode of this six-part series, following a terrifying ordeal at the hands of his toad-loving, hygiene-obsessed relatives. Welcome to the sinister, hilarious world of the ‘League of Gentlemen’, populated by a cast of distinctly warped individuals, all played by three members of a four-man writing team.The League started life in the early 1990s, evoking old-style revues with their name and their tuxedo-clad performances. The material, however, bore little relation to that of genteel 1950s performers – the League’s dark, twisted sketches have seen them likened to both Monty Python and David Lynch.After winning the Perrier award at Edinburgh in 1997, and before turning their attentions to television, they produced ‘On The Town With The League Of Gentlemen’, a Sony award-winning series for Radio 4.This welcome release from the BBC Radio Collection contains the complete series, and is an essential purchase for the many fans of the television version who missed the earlier incarnation. Many of the storylines are similar to the TV version, but there is plenty of material which will be new to listeners, including characters who did not make it onto the screen – and for anyone new to the League, the radio edition easily stands on its own as one of the best comedy series of recent years. Running time approx 3 hours.- John Oates