I loved the first 2 series but the Christmas special was unfunny despite Herr Lip who is usually very funny and am 3 episodes into series 3 with nary a titter. Some of the new characters are weak - like the crotchety old man and the fat debt collector.
Is it just me or is this the general consensus.
**The one good bit in the Christmas special was the Herr Lip nod to Nosferatu.
Some people feel that way.
Personally, I think the Christmas Special is the best thing they've ever done and Series 3 is the best out of the three series.
They definitely took it in a different direction with Series 3, abandoning the sketch show format of the first two series and going for more self-contained stories. It's not for everybody's tastes, but I think it has some of their most creative material.
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I came on here to start a thread about season 3 but I'm happy to jump on the OPs back.
It was always a dark series with grotesque characters, but I agree with OP that season 3 was unfunny and, perhaps more importantly, deeply unpleasant.
I thought I loved this show first time around, and even went to see their pantomime in Southport (Merseyside) live. Yesterday I took advantage of a free month on Netflix to watch all three seasons in one day, and now I'm not sure what I first saw in it. OK, it's amusing enough for 2 seasons, but then comes season 3. What a horribly depressing experience it is. Yes, I'm older, but I still love black comedy/sick humour. But this season is black and sick without the relief of much humour.
I'm with Robhiphop - the third series is my favourite. Clearly much darker and with fewer jokes but also just hilariously grim and quite touching in places.
shareCertainly a different beast to 1 and 2 MartPol, but to me it was unnecessarily OTT.
It was clear from the start (and confirmed from subsequent works) that the League of Gentleman crowd had a seriously dark sense of humour. That's fine by me, and the balance was perfect until the third series.
But it was too harsh and abrupt a change of mood for me. I enjoyed series 3 first time around, and probably still enjoy it. But the more times I watch it, the more it makes my flesh crawl, but not in a good way.
Still, I suppose at least I'm watching the repeats again.
I am with you sort of. I thought the first episode was OK not amazing but passable. The lowest the show went was with the magician being burned by those thugs.
shareI agree but disagree. It was certainly darker but it wasn't dark comedy. Dark comedy was the first 2 seasons. To be a dark comedy there has to be a punchline or some sort of joke. Season 3 was just dark. Infact a better and more accurate way of calling it is mean spirited which it was. I remembered watching it when I was young and being disgusted with it especially with the magician being burned by a cigarette. Where is the comedy in that scene? How is this genius or entertaining to see someone be assaulted in a serious way? It wasn't. To give the writers some credit they obviously knew it was *beep* which is why there wasn't a season 4. They could have just milked the series continuously but instead they called it quits. I just wished they had done it after season 2 and not make a completely irrelevant and boring film.
shareI disagree. Series three was where they really went for broke, and wrote some of their best stuff.
The way they packed all those stories into the van crash scene was amazing, and episode four had me ROTFLOL!
The weird Jehovah Witness scene, and the bodies falling from the ceiling was hysterical!
I've seen all three seasons on Netflix, but the Christmas special wasn't on any of the DVDs.'I guess it's on a separate DVD.
sorry to be condescending but i'm sure you'd have had less trouble if it had had the training wheels that was the abominable canned laughter of the first two series
sharesorry to be condescending but i'm sure you'd have had less trouble if it had had the training wheels that was the abominable canned laughter of the first two series
LOG was never a series that was relegated to featuring mere "jokes" in them and nothing else. That was never it's intention. It was a wonderfully bizarre and macabre series that featured both comedy and horror elements throughout. It also thrived and excelled at creating an uncanny sense of foreboding atmosphere which inhabited the entire series, and of course within the whole area/community of Royston Vasey. So in this respect Series 3 was an absolute triumph in continuing on, and then upping the ante, with the macabre brilliance that was previously established in Series 1&2.
"Life IS pain highness. Anyone who says differently is selling something".
OK, 'jokes' was maybe the wrong word to use. But I will take some persuading to change my opinion that 1 and 2 had the comedy/horror balance right, and series 3 was just mean-spirited and sporadically amusing at best.
It wasn't a natural progression (as you say,'upping the ante'), and maybe it was too abrupt a change for me. But I'm pretty sure I kind of liked it first time around, and it's only been with repeated viewings that I've come to realise that it's a deeply unpleasant and unfunny piece of work.
The main problem I find with season 3 is the over relying on puerile and juvenile sex jokes, which seem to be a lazy fall back in some places. Story wise, Pauline and mickey becoming a couple absolutely undid all the hilarious job seeker sketches of the first two series. In addition, no matter how devious Ross was, I doubt he'd sleep with Pauline under any circumstances. It just seem a bit too explicit in terms of throwing caution to the wind to see what works, because in places quite a lot of the ideas fell so flat. I blame the fact they likely had years to write a lot of the first two series (back when they were stage/radio performers), and with the third they were probably on a much tighter deadline to deliver scripts.
Aside from these grumbles, the peaks of series three are truly great. The last episode of series 3 is just behind the Christmas special as their finest piece of work.