Television series

The League of Gentlemen

The League of Gentlemen turns a fictional Northern town into a rogues' gallery of grotesques, with three actors (plus co-writer Jeremy Dyson) transforming into shopkeepers, butchers, and locals nobody in their right mind should trust. It's gleefully cruel, visually inventive sketch comedy with real menace lurking under the wigs and prosthetics. Not for the squeamish; perfect for anyone who thinks horror and hilarity make excellent bedfellows.

TVMaze rating8.0

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Inside No. 92014

Pemberton and Shearsmith's anthology series proves they can do this in miniature — each episode a self-contained nightmare, joke, or gut-punch, often all three, with the same delight in twisted transformation.

But No returning grotesques or town to get attached to — every episode starts from zero, which some find less satisfying than a returning cast.

Inside No. 9 poster

Psychoville2009

The same creative trio's other big swing — a horror-comedy serial following misfits and killers, with the prosthetics and body horror dialled up even further.

But Denser and more plot-driven than League's sketch structure, and its second series leans harder into genuine unease over laughs.

Psychoville poster

Garth Marenghi's Darkplace2004

A gloriously cheap-looking pastiche of 80s horror TV, endlessly quotable, and just as committed to its own bizarre internal logic and terrible small-town doctors as League is to Royston Vasey's.

But Only six episodes exist, and the deliberately bad production values are a joke that either lands instantly or never does.

Garth Marenghi's Darkplace poster

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Something you would not have found on your own.

The Last Kingdom2015

Same engine as League — an ordinary institution revealed to be a nest of the deranged and the possessed — but run through a serious arthouse director instead of a sketch troupe, in Danish rather than English.

Lars von Trier's Danish hospital miniseries is horror-comedy of the highest, strangest order — ghosts, secret societies, and a cast of grotesques haunting the corridors of a Copenhagen hospital, shot on grainy handheld film that makes it feel like a fever dream.

But Subtitled, unfinished (von Trier never made the promised third series), and its tone lurches between slapstick and genuine dread with no warning.

The Last Kingdom poster
More like this (8)

Nighty Night2004no page yet

Julia Davis's sociopathic dark comedy has the same appetite for cruelty and cringe, following a woman with no boundaries and even fewer scruples through a cul-de-sac of victims.

But There's barely a sympathetic character in it, and the meanness is sustained rather than punctuated with warmth, which can wear viewers down.

Catterick2004no page yet

Vic Reeves and Bob Mortimer's surreal thriller-comedy is soaked in the same fondness for small-town weirdness and off-kilter menace, just with more absurdist non-sequiturs.

But The plot barely holds together and the humour is stranger and looser — less character comedy, more fever dream.

Limmy's Show2009no page yet

Brian Limond's Glasgow-set sketch show has the same one-man-many-grotesques energy, swinging from surreal silliness to properly unsettling within a single scene.

But Very Scottish in accent and reference, and its sketches are shorter and stranger, without League's ongoing cast of characters.

The Mighty Boosh2004

If it's the sheer commitment to a strange internal universe you love, the Boosh's zoo-keeper surrealism scratches a similar itch, just trading horror for glam-rock fantasy.

But Much less interested in menace or darkness — this is whimsical rather than unsettling, and the tone couldn't be further from Royston Vasey's.

The Mighty Boosh poster

Little Britain2003

Same trick of a small cast playing dozens of recurring grotesques across sketches, with the same willingness to go for the queasy, near-the-bone joke.

But Broader and more repetitive, and some of its characters and jokes have aged considerably worse than League's ever did.

Little Britain poster

Toast of London2012

Matt Berry's preposterous actor-for-hire farce shares League's love of a small, recurring cast of weirdos and a delight in going as ridiculous as possible.

But Its target is showbiz vanity rather than small-town horror, so the darkness and dread of League are almost entirely absent.

Toast of London poster

Gummo1997no page yet

It shares League's fascination with small-town freakishness and outsiders, but strips out the comedy entirely and plays it dead straight — the mirror image of Royston Vasey with the jokes surgically removed.

Harmony Korine's plotless portrait of a tornado-ravaged Ohio town is stuffed with the same kind of unforgettable human grotesques League invents — cat killers, bathtub bacon-eaters, boys in rabbit-ear masks — except every one of them plays real.

But There is no joke, no punchline, and no relief — it's transgressive, slow, and genuinely upsetting rather than darkly funny.

The Prisoner1967

Royston Vasey's you'll-never-leave dread and its parade of cheerful, faintly sinister locals is a direct descendant of the Village — the same claustrophobic small-world horror, decades earlier and played for paranoia instead of laughs.

Decades before Royston Vasey, Patrick McGoohan's paranoid spy-thriller trapped its hero in a picturesque, inescapable village full of smiling strangers who all seem to be in on something he isn't.

But It's a deadly serious Cold War allegory with barely a joke in sight, and its ending is famously, deliberately baffling.

The Prisoner poster

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Recommended by

Inside No. 9, Garth Marenghi's Darkplace, The Mighty Boosh, Little Britain, Camberwick Green, The Fast Show, Psychoville, Harry Enfield & Chums