Another League

SHOPKEEPERS Tubbs and Edward, Barbara the transsexual taxi-driver, restart officer Pauline and carnival owner Papa Lazarou – some might say they were all the creations of disturbed minds. But most would recognise them as some of the more extreme characters from The League of Gentlemen.

Now two of its members, Steve Pemberton and Reece Shearsmith, have devised Psychoville, and it’s deliciously strange.

It focuses on the lives of five offbeat characters: an embittered one-handed clown, a desperately misguided midwife, a lovestruck telekinetic dwarf, a blind avaricious collector and a serial-killer-obsessed man-child.

They appear to be unconnected, until they all begin receiving the same sinister message which states: ‘‘I know what you did...’’ ‘‘It kind of was born out of that love of 24, Lost, Heroes and Dexter, those things that hook you in with a cliffhanger every week,’’ says Shearsmith.

Pemberton and Shearsmith also appear in the series, but it wasn’t merely a way of providing themselves with juicy roles. Instead, they’ve assembled an impressive cast. ‘‘We’re in every show, but we don’t dominate it,’’ says Pemberton.

‘‘We’ve got people like Dawn French, Daisy Haggard, Eileen Atkins and Christopher Biggins (playing himself).

We worked hard to make the characters fun and interesting, so they’d say, ‘I’d love to do that’. Being actors ourselves, we know what’s going to hook them in.

‘‘There are whole scenes we’re not in, which is very different for us. We ended up playing four characters each – two of whom are major and two quite minor. We love doing that, and it’s what we’re known for, but we didn’t want it to become another League Of Gentlemen.

We’re very keen that this is its own show.’’ Does the birth of Psychoville mean the League is now closed? ‘‘It’s still a going concern. We’ve never broken up,’’ says Pemberton, ‘But there was a decision to have a break, during which we wrote this. It has taken two years from writing the script to getting it actually made and on TV.

‘‘There’s no reason why we won’t go back, we’re still good friends, but to do anything together would need a year and getting everyone together is tricky.’’ The League has always had a massive internet following, and the boys have taken this a step further by devising a major online experience for viewers.

‘‘Viewers can spot website addresses each week from which they can get a lot more info. There’s also a question about one of the characters, asked by the person who’s blackmailing them,” says Pemberton.

‘‘We thought it was an exciting way of expanding it – we weren’t asked to do it, we actually sat down and wrote it. Most people won’t even notice but, for those who do, we want them to feel they are investing in a whole world. We hope people do bother, otherwise it’s going to sink in cyberspace.’’ So, what exactly can we expect from the boys when the eagerly-anticipated series airs? ‘‘We want to surprise people,’’ reveals Pemberton.

‘‘There are some disturbing, weird images in there, but audiences like to be challenged. It’s the same tone as The League Of Gentlemen, it’s called Psychoville, it’s on late-ish... I think they know what they’re going to get.’’ THE title, Undercover Boss, tells you everything you need to know about the two-part series. We’ve had secret millionaires pretending to be ordinary to find worthy causes to benefit from their charity, now this two-part series has bosses trying to find out more about their own businesses by going back to the shop floor.

Andy Edge, company director of the UK’s second largest caravan holiday company, is the first to mix with his workers.

He assumes a false identity and returns to the “trenches” – cleaning caravans, waiting at tables and even working as an entertainer.

The idea is to see what improvements can be made and how his executive decisions impact on staff. Unlike his staff, however, he knows he can retreat to his comfy office once the experiment is over.