Hello? Hello? What's all this shouting? We'll have no trouble here!

There's this TV show. It's a very good TV show. I think. It's funny and well-acted. I'm pretty sure. It's smoothly written and very, very clever. That much I do know. It's called "The League Of Gentlemen" and I really like it, but I'm not sure why.

I was given the DVD by one of my "When In Rome" co-stars and sat and watched the first season over the course of a lazy Saturday. It really is a very clever show that I am fully aware I have been backward in discovering (given it's 1999-2002 air dates), and am glad I finally have.

It's set in the (I hope) fictional town of Royston Vasey and boy do some weirdos live there. There's Babs, the pre-operative tansexual who drives the local taxi, Edawrd and Tubbs who run the local shop (which is for local people) and Hilary BRiss, the butcher who's "special stuff" sets mouths watering and - in the 2nd season - noses bleeding. It's not always comfortable, and not always laugh-out-loud funny, but it is frequently wrong and definitely doesn't pull punches when it comes to going for the gross-out or shock-factor.

I'm not sure if I like the laugh-track (I hope they lose it for the 3rd season), but it does seem to have been recorded by showing an actual audience the episodes. In one or two bits the laugh track has a chuckle or two of the "I know this is going to end badly, but I'll laugh when it does" kind. I'm also not sure, strange as it sounds, if I like all the actual women who turned up playing women in the second series either. For the first series, it was almost entirely the core group of three comedians (Mark Gatiss, Steve Pemberton and Reece Shearsmith) playing all the roles - of whatever gender. Oh, BTW, the fourth Gentleman is Jeremy Dyson who mainly writes, but sometimes sneaks in a cameo.

I'm not sure if I'll immediately rush out and buy the DVDs, but once I've got all the West Wing, Black Books, Buffy, Scrubs and 24 out there I might just flick some pesos the BBC's way.

three and a half seriously fucked-up townspeople...