Each week I will be running a fans account of why they still love the League 13 years after the show first aired on TV. Visit our twitter page to find out how you can have yours here!
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Anna Horigan
The League's first TV broadcast was in 1999, and since then they have created three series, three books, two live shows and a film.
The gentlemen's careers led them to drift but they still remain great friends and each gentlemen has had a fantastic career; with Mark writing and starring in the multi-award winning drama Sherlock, Jeremy with his macabre comedy-thriller Funland and Steve and Reece with their co-collaboration in the sensational Psychoville along with countless others.
But along the gentlemen's path a group of people have always remained loyal (or should that be local?), through thick and thin these people have shown and expressed their love for a strange little sitcom/sketch show set in the grim Northern town of Royston Vasey. To the untrained eye of a 'stranger' it would not seem like the obvious program for a almost cult like group of fans to still be obsessed with over 13 years since first broadcast.
I was barely alive when the first show was aired and my first League memory was a episode repeated on Dave. It was a Dentons sketch in which Harvey says "Got any used tissues?". This has always stuck in my mind and I memorably asked my parents what that meant. I got no answer.
Everyone has a different experience of League-watching, who they watched it with, what was for tea on that first episode and who the next day they would talk about it with. Memories still fresh on the minds of those lucky enough to watch it on live broadcast, but those among the new generation of League fans have a different experience.
The new generation each discovering it in different ways, stories, parents, friends (in my case, the story of my friend's parents) but to everyone a treasure held deep in our hearts, and on the t-shirts, mugs and snowstorms on our precious things shelf. But the League is much more than a cheap merchandise-selling series, it is a work of comedy genius!
Dark, twisted but fantastically funny, with brilliantly thought through characters and sketches which just leaves you wanting more! Thankfully they didn't continue until the pond was dry and still trying to get water like sadly, many programs seem to do. But the three series were superb and when the Gentlemen decided that they had done enough, it was sorely accepted but it was the right thing to do.
I find it a great shame that the third series was not appreciated as much as the other two. I think this was because they did a different take on the characters and layed out the episodes in more like a mini Hitchcock thriller rather than the sketch show we all know and love. I find some of the comments extremely unfair as change is a great thing and the last series was new and fresh instead of repeating old jokes.
A decade and a bit later, with nearly one hundered characters, 19 episodes, four gentlemen and uncountable amounts of loyal fans who will always be local and Royston Vasey will always be forever be in our hearts because... You'll never leave!
Now that important question remains:
ARE YOU LOCAL?
Written by Anna Horigan |
