The League of Gentlemen is one of the greatest successes of modern British broadcasting. Four friends from drama school spent many years in fringe theatre honing their bizarre sketches of small-town life (previous plays also include the fondly-remembered The Teen People until they began to win awards and they were picked up by Radio 4. The television series followed, as did the Christmas special and the tie-in book. But where the League differs from most franchises is that both of these latter items were really rather good. Everything the quartet (Mark Gatiss, Steve Pemberton, Reece Shearsmith and Jeremy Dyson, who just writes) produces darkens their already macabre fictional world still further.

But when they were on the radio, things seemed a lot different. On the Town With the League of Gentlemen is an odd series in that it is clearly fresh and original, while still fitting perfectly within BBC Radio 4's format for a 30-minute comedy show. Although let's be fair to Radio 4, they have produced some very innovative comedy. I'm Sorry I'll Read That Again helped launch John Cleese, Radio Active was also picked up for TV while losing none of its edge, and there's some lesser-known gems such as Lenin of the Rovers (about a Communist football club) and Old Harry's Game (about life in Hell).

How to describe League comedy? Well, some pundits have picked up on the fact that the three actors in the group play all the parts themselves, even the women, which has led to those tiresome comparisons with Monty Python. However, I feel the true comedy lies in the fact that these characters are more than just one-sketch stereotypes. Many are suprisingly rounded characters, which lead to occasional moments of pathos.

The other winning element is that League of Gentlemen humour consists entirely of making us laugh at things we really shouldn't. The radio series starts this in its very first moments, with its foul-mouthed nun stealing a man's train ticket and an unpleasant radio agony aunt heaping withering scorn on the people making requests.

Later on, we are encouraged to laugh at a transexual taxi driver called Barbara, and her apparently doomed attempts to find love. The hapless vet, Dr Chinnery, is called upon to perform a few operations which could never be shown on TV (one ends up with him inadvertantly ripping what we shall delicately refer to as the 'bamboo shooter' from a giant white panda), and of course there are the famous sketches which have been repeated in a thousand formats, as 'Geoff' attempts to tell a joke in a restaurant.

A few then have been tempted to write off this comedy as simple shock therapy. Which fails to explain what is, for me, the most difficult of all their sketches. We are introduced to two old ladies working in a charity shop. In their earliest sketches they are shown to be either deaf or senile in a series of jokes which are in questionable taste. Then we are shown a distraught lady coming in with a bag of baby toys which she 'won't be needing'. Totally missing the woman's obvious circumstances, the two women sort through the bag, looking for the 'special sticker' on the teddy bear and on the bag itself.

'It's got to have a special sticker, dearie, else we can't take it. It could kill a kiddie, a bag like that.'

Eventually the woman runs off in tears, with the two old crones none the wiser. It's a fantastically-written piece which is rather swamped by the more extravagant characters surrounding it, but I think it is telling that it wasn't until their second series that the team took this piece to the small screen.

In fact, if this series proves anything, it's that radio is almost certainly the best forum to be innovative and daring. Although the TV series would eventually provide characters and plots far darker and more unsettling than anything here, the radio tries out a few ideas which have still not appeared. The midget, Mr. Ingleby, has never appeared on TV. And the evil radio presenter Bernice Woodall has also never had quite the same presence. Translated to the screen as a bitter female vicar, she has never delivered her shocking opinions on:

1. The disabled: 'Tell her if she can't manage the stairs, then she can't come in.'
2. The morbidly obese: 'Strictly-controlled diet? Of what, deep-fried chocolate cakes? You're fat, girl!'

And many other fantastically un-PC statements. The TV series might have been able to swear a bit more, and indulge the boys' taste for parading around in female flesh-suits, but it really was on the radio that this series first started flexing its muscles. Geoff's speech as a best man is far more poignant (and funny) than on the small screen, for one.

So, to get a bit more specific, what do you actually get here? Two tapes, each with three 30-minute episodes of audio mayhem. The cover (at least on the UK version) provides a picture of the three actors, so you can try and put faces to the characters (this is not easy).

For those who have watched the TV series, I'd better make two things clear. The first is that the town is called Spent, rather than the more famous Royston Vasey. One thing you don't get here is the Local Shop, with its murderous management. Presumably Tubbs and Edward were too visual for sound only.

I chose this product for The Truth Write-Off - designed to promote the cultures of Epinions.com's international members - because it says so much about British comedy. Many British comedians have kicked off their careers on radio, from John Cleese to Alastair McGowan, and radio's status as a proving ground has seen many of these perform their best material in the medium.

Not only this, but the originality and popularity of The League of Gentlemen demonstrates conclusively that there is more to British comedy than Monty Python. And it also shows why. From Blackadder to Red Dwarf, British comedy has always been hugely successful because it's the product of a single creative vision. The League of Gentlemen have always been very lucky in that they've retained creative control throughout their broadcasting career. Things aren't written and re-written by committee, and the advantage of that is that they entertain with a strong artistic voice that trashy sitcoms like Friends will never hope to match. Everyone just tries a little bit harder. Gatiss, Shearsmith, Pemberton and Dyson began by writing a few sketches about sick things that made them laugh, and they've been allowed to present those sketches to an international audience to find that they make everyone else laugh as well. In this alone, they are reminiscent of the Python team. Except less upper middle-class.

I'm not one for flag-waving. But the fact is that this could only happen in Britain. It could have been made in another country, for sure, but would surely have ended up buried in the schedules and heavily edited.

And finally, much as we hate to admit it, most of the characters that you meet in Spent or Royston Vasey are very easy to come across in everyday life. Even auto-eroticism obsessed Harvey Denton, or the hopelessly twisted Oliver Plimsoll. Perhaps the most uncomfortable thing about this series is that the characters are twisted exaggerations of the darkest side of humanity, while still being utterly recognisable.

Come out for a night on the town.

The players in this write-off are:

aaliyahgirluk of the UK
ALawston of England
amysmum of Scotland
beasmith of Scotland
ben-david of New Zealand
CarolaLind of Sweden
cartman_2k of Norway
cr01 of Wales
cripper of Hong Kong
Daniel_Rf of Portugal
DavidMac of Canada
Divine_Cheese of England
elsa70 of Italy
ezzuk of Denmark
hadassahchana of Canada
hvojr of the USA, who represents Finland
JAME23 of Canada
LamboLucifer of Germany
Macondo of Spain/England
MagnumForce of Canada
MariaEkaterina of Bulgaria/Korea
mattygroves of England
misstaegu of Korea
monssfisch of England/Japan
mridula of India
murpho of Ireland/the Netherlands
nscanuck of Canada
paulyoungotti of England
Petra of Germany
proxam of Scotland
shadow8 of the USA, who represents Hong Kong/China
smile2k1 of England

and the hosts:

copernicus of Australia
kuuleimomi of the Russian Federation

Adam and Finn would like to thank the following Americans for playing along
ed_grover, megugrrrl, girlboxer5, and TheUnknown285. Muchos thanks to all
the foreigners, who chose to write and help with the names.





Recommended: Yes