Mark Gatiss Speaks! League of Gentlemen! Dr. Who! Hitchhiker's Guide! Too Much Other Stuff to Co

Though they have been criminally overlooked on this continent there is no doubt in my mind that England’s League of Gentlemen – not to be confused with the very bad film adapted from a very good graphic novel of a similar name – are one of the very finest comedy groups in the world today. Blending absurdist humor with classical horror film references and sly social commentary the quartet of Mark Gatiss, Steve Pemberton, reece Shearsmith and Jeremy Dyson have built a rabidly loyal cadre of fans scattered around the globe.

When word got out that the League were working on a feature film I immediately began digging around to see if there was any chance of speaking to one of them about their new venture. Shockingly enough I got in contact with Mark, and, even more shockingly, he agreed to speak with me. We spent more than an hour not only talking about the film but the history of the League, Mark’s involvement with the newly rejuvenated Dr. Who, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, life on a Woody Allen set and a good bit more, besides. The entire conversation follows below.

T: What I would like to do is some basic background stuff and then move into some of the other projects because you are BUSY right now.

M: I am insanely busy.

T: So we’ll cover some of that stuff and then move into the League and build into a crescendo with the film.

M: Right.

T: One thing that’s not really here or there but you mentioned in your email that you were in Montreal visiting someone named Rufus. And there aren’t a lot of Rufuses, really, so when I hear of a Rufus in Montreal I automatically think of Rufus Wainwright.

M: That’s correct.

T: Really? How do you know him?

M: He’s a friend of mine. We met about five years ago – maybe more – because I was a fan of his first record. I interviewed him for a magazine here. In fact I insisted on interviewing him so I could get to know him and, happily, we became friends after that. We’re hoping to collaborate on some thing. Project X. Of which I can speak no more.

T: Can you give any kind of hint as far as, at least, the medium?

M: I shouldn’t, no. I think it often kills things to talk about them too soon. But I had a lovely time. It was minus twenty two degrees.

T: The weather here is so messed up right now. Apparently the global warming thing is actually happening.

M: I was watching the news about these storms here; there was a terrible storm in the north of England that killed lots of people. Carlisle has been flooded. And in the same piece of news there was more about the tsunami and more about this storm in Denmark and I said, “You know, this is like one of those compilations you see in a bad disaster movie but you never really believe.”

T: It is. They’re actually saying that the Gulf Stream has moved over North America.

M: Oh my god. That’s frightening.

T: It’s moved something like fifty kilometers. And usually it doesn’t get really cold here in Toronto, we don’t get any real snow, until the middle of January. But this year we had what will easily be the coldest days of the year – down in the minus twenties in the middle of the day – back in early December but today we’re well above freezing. It makes no sense at all.

M: And meanwhile, in the White House, there are people who say it’s not happening.

T: We have an interesting love-hate relationship with the States here in Canada.

M: Hate-hate, more like.

T: Well, no. We’re not big fans of Bush. Canada’s a very left leaning country. We’re more socially progressive than the US is, so somebody like Bush really grates on us. We got along much better with Clinton.

M: Who didn’t?

T: I’m sure it’s just a matter of time, now that the gay marriage thing has happened in Canada, before the States declares us moral pariahs.

M: Well, I really think we’re back pedaling into a dark age, certainly in terms of America. I think there’s a frightening sort of witch hunt going on. For ages I’ve been wanting to do a TV program, a five minute slot at the end of the day called ‘Did I Miss A Meeting?’ Didn’t we win this argument? About a hundred years ago? With creationism?

T: It’s all government by sound-bite. It’s all sound bites and reactionism. I tracked down Chris Morris’ Brass Eye a little while back and it’s frightening just how accurate that has become.

M: Oh, yeah. The extraordinary thing about that show and The Day Today is that the news now is almost beyond parody. It has actually turned into those programs. In fact, a lot of the tsunami footage I had to turn off. It was becoming disaster-porn. It was horrid. How many times can you show the same footage?

T: It was like watching CNN when the Washington sniper was happening. It was twenty four hour sniper vision, as though that was the only happening in the entire world.

M: Well, this is not news. It’s just because you’re on for twenty four hours a day. Wait until something happens! But, there you go. Today’s rant.

T: Anyway. Back on topic. Can you tell me a little bit about your own background and how you came into comedy?

M: Absolutely. I was born in County Durham in the north of England. Always wanted to act and write and couldn’t really do anything else so I’m very happy to be in a position to be talking to people like you. My only other ambition was to be a paleontologist but, as Peter Cook would say, I didn’t have the Latin.

I went to drama school at a place called bretton Hall, which is closing. I met Steve there. He was in my year and reece in the year below. Jeremy was at the university proper, we were at an affiliate college in Yorkshire. I knew Jeremy after about a year there. Steve and I wrote a couple of plays together. We didn’t really do anything with reece, I think, except become friends.

When we graduated we all spent a rough year or so, maybe two years, trying to become jobbing writers and actors and doing alright, I suppose. Then the friend who introduced me to Jeremy was directing a play called The Traitor, a Jacobean revenge drama, which reece did. They wanted to re-stage it in this ‘Best of the Fringe’ festival and they couldn’t do it because the cast had dispersed so there was suddenly this five night slot open. And Gordon Anderson, a TV and opera director, approached us all individually, having known us at college, and said ‘Write a comedy show’ because he knew we all had a comic bent. He just needed to fill this five night slot and get himself out of trouble. And so we did it. Having all been brought up on Monty Python and Not The Nine O’Clock News the idea of forming a comedy group was exciting and a bit bizarre.

We did the five shows, which went very well, and we thought, “Well, maybe we should persevere.” And curiously, I can remember going home for Christmas between some shows in December of 94 and January of 95 – ten of your earth years ago – and I said to Jeremy in the pub while we were watching Steve Coogan doing Paul Calf’s Video Diary, “Do you think we’ve left it too late? Do you think we’ve missed the boat?” It just suddenly felt like there was Steve Coogan doing this extraordinary, brilliant thing on telly and we were just starting in this tiny fringe venue. And happily I was wrong.

We spent a year or so doing one off gigs and residencies in a little fringe theater in Little Venice called The Canal Café and we worked very, very hard. We decided to be quite ruthless and we changed about a quarter of the stuff every week. It was a ‘rolling material’ principle so at the end of four weeks we’d have a totally new show. That meant that went we went to the Edinburgh Festival in 96 – we got in to the Pleasance Theater by the skin of our teeth, by the skin of my teeth in fact. I batted my eyelids at an elderly old queen – we had a lot of good material. It was kind of like an Edinburgh Festival fairy tale for us because we started off playing to, like, a tramp. And then a tramp and his dog. Then we bumped into some people we knew who were doing a little show and they came to see us, we went to see them. And then word of mouth started to spread. We got a great review in The Scotsman and then, suddenly, we were selling out. By the end of the Festival we had an agent and a radio series, which was rather good.

So we came back to London and did another residency to work on more material, and we did the radio show. We won the Sony Award that year and went back to Edinburgh the next year and won the Perrier. These things obviously help, and the Perrier, in particular, helped turn the radio series into a TV series as soon as possible.

T: I laughed very hard when I was going through my Spaced DVDs and came across both your and reece’s cameos.

M: That was a good time. I don’t know if you’ve got the new release with the documentary …

T: Yeah, I do.

M: I was very proud of the kung fu, as I explained there. That doesn’t come easily to me.

T: How do you know Simon [Pegg, star / writer of Spaced and Shaun of the Dead] and Edgar [Wright, director of same]?

M: I met Edgar first. Edgar came to see a show in 96. He was working with David Walliams and Matt Lucas [both of Little Britain] for the Paramount Channel and I got to know him there. He was a genuinely beardless boy then. He only grows the beard because he has to look over eight. After that he asked Matt and David and Me to be in these little American sitcom spoofs they were doing for the Paramount Channel. And Simon I really can’t remember. I must have met him through Edgar. Or just knowing people. That’s one of the things that happen to you. You become aware that you’re part of a movement or circle in any sort of artistic endeavor. You start to meet these other people. I really can’t remember. I feel like I’ve always known Simon. Maybe we were married.

T: Given that there’s some history with those guys, there was an early rumor that some of you may be involved with Hot Fuzz, their new film.

M: Oh, I have no idea. I know reece had his moment in Shaun and I did some voice stuff in Shaun of the Dead but I have no idea. We’ll have to wait and see. But we’ve just given Simon a cameo in our film so he’d better fucking pay attention.

T: Oh, really? Is there anybody else popping up in there?

M: Ummm. Oh. Now. Should I tell you? I think people know about Simon. Do they?

T: Well, they do now.

M: I’ll keep quiet just because it’s more fun that way. David Warner’s in it, that’s already out, and there are some other people in it but you’ll have to wait. I can’t spoil everything.

T: Little Britain has become another favorite of mine recently and in season one I’ve seen your name go zipping past in the credits. What did you actually do with them?

M: Well, this was a very unhappy time for me because the day I started on Little Britain I found out that my mother was dying. As a result whatever I’d planned to do was very truncated. Really, I wasn’t that involved outside of six meetings where I gave them my opinions on which characters to leave out – not because they were not funny but because they didn’t fit. I took to heart the maxim our first producer taught us: What you leave out is as important as what you leave in, in terms of defining a show. So, that was it, really.

We were all taken by surprise at how huge the show has become. I’ve had people ring me up and congratulate me and it really has nothing to do with me. I just gave them my opinions and they seemed grateful for it, but it’s not as if I was the architect of the show.

I have to say without being controversialist – and I do not want to be controversialist – that I think the show has come out resembling The League of Gentlemen a little too much. But it’s the sincerest form of flattery. It really is mostly the look more than the material. There’s not a lot there that’s the same.

T: The sensibility is fairly in common. It’s a fair bet that if you’re a fan of one show that you’ll probably like the other.

M: Yes, but it’s an extraordinary thing, on BBC One and everything. So there you are.

T: I asked for input on questions on a League email list and had a flurry of very enthusiastic people insist that I had to ask you about PRoBE and whether it would ever be available on DVD.

M: [laughs] Oh … PRoBE … well. You’re probing nicely. I have no idea. Bill Baggs, who directed them, has vanished off the face of the earth. I think he may have joined some sort of cult. I really don’t know. They may be available on video, I have no idea. I don’t know what people think of them. I haven’t seen them myself in a long time. I genuinely wouldn’t swap the experience.

T: What are they?

M: They were like Dr. Who spin-offs with various old Dr. Who actors. I did four. I remember one British magazine calling them ‘The British X Files’, which was hysterical. We had no money at all. I did learn an awful lot about writing for television, and certainly what not to write for television, but we had such a good time. And there but for the grace of god … that could easily have been the only thing I got recorded. I’m not down on them at all, principally because in the first one I got to work with Jon Pertwee [the early seventies Dr. Who] two years before he died and I wouldn’t swap that for all the rubies in the world. So, ‘I don’t know’ would be the answer. There won’t be a fifth one.

T: And now you’re working on Dr. Who, proper.

M: I am, yes! I was in Cardiff yesterday, at the press junket, and it was – I can say without affectation – one of the most exciting days of my entire life.

T: You’ve got the one episode that you scripted?

M: Yes.

T: Have you seen them? How did they come out?

M: I’ve seen mine.

T: And? Are you happy with how it came out?

M: I’m thrilled.

T: How is Eccleston [Christopher Eccleston has been cast as the new Dr. Who]? I really, really like him as an actor and he can just go in so many different directions.

M: That’s exactly it. He’s brilliant. He’s brilliant. I think the show will surprise a lot of people and that, particularly, Chris will. He’s known for his intensity, his rather scary intensity, which he DOES have as the Doctor. And equally, if you know him in real life, he’s a really good laugh and a lovely man and it’s that sort of duality that he brings to it. He’s like a kind of crazy child, but then when he tells you off you quake in your shoes. It’s actually kind of a Tom Baker-ish quality, but in a completely different way.

T: It seems like if they wanted to go that way they could make the Doctor a lot more physical than he ever has been in the past.

M: Oh, yes. I’d say he’s the first Doctor in a long time who looks like he could handle himself in a fight.

T: I know there were some problems behind the scenes getting the rights to use the Daleks, has that all been worked out?

M: Yes.

T: So they’re back into the big Doctor continuity?

M: They’re back. They are. That’s true. I saw one yesterday and cried real tears. It’s a marvelous story by Rob Shearman and I can’t think of a better way of bringing them back. It makes your hair stand on end, it’s so spooky. Intense. Dynamite, really.

T: Is this going to end up being a continuing series or will it stop after these ones?

M: Oh, well, everyone wants it to continue, obviously, but it’s a real killer. I mean thirteen forty five minute episodes may not sound like a lot but the thing is that apart from a few two-parters they’re all one offs, so you need new sets, new situations, and new casts. It’s really exhausting. When my episode was finished recording I shot the League film and did several other things and by the time I cam to see my episode they still had five more to shoot. It feels like so long ago! Russell [Davies, another Who writer] said to me “We’ve discovered the show that will kill us all.” But, god yes. We’d love to continue.

T: If it continues on would you want to keep on writing for it?

M: Oh, god yes. I don’t want to just do one. I feel like having been privileged to be part of the team that brought it back in what I feel is such a marvelous way I’d like to leave a legacy of stories. Of course mostly I’d like to be Dr. Who!

T: I know you’re also writing novels.

M: I’ve just written my novel, yes. It’s just out at the moment; it’s called The Vesuvius Club. And I’m working on the sequel. While I sleep. That’s the only time I have.

T: What are they about?

M: Well, it’s about a secret agent called Lucifer Box. Initially I wanted to write a sort of Arthur Conan Doyle piece set at the turn of the century, that’s my favorite period. I love that kind of thing, what Doyle used to call ‘sensational literature’. Crime, and a Fu Manchu, Sherlock Holmes sort of atmosphere. So that’s what it is. It’s about this portrait painter who’s a secret secret agent and assassin who gets involved in this bizarre plan to systematically detonate all of Italy’s volcanoes. I wrote it as an Edwardian pastiche, and I’ve been commissioned to write three of them, but when I finished it I decided that I’d kind of done that period, as many venomous centipedes and fog bound coach chases, as much as I could so what I’m going to with the next one is take the character on about twenty years and do it as a kind of John Buchan style adventure. We’ll move him into pre-fascist Europe. And the third one, if I ever get that far, he’ll be quite an old man and I’ll do this sturdy, Ian Fleming pastiche, a bit of a Casino Royale flavor.

T: Are they being published outside of England at all?

M: Yes. I don’t what the situation is as far as export but they’re going to do a German edition, which is rather extraordinary. Apparently British fiction does very well in Germany. I don’t know whether it’s reached America yet, I didn’t notice while I was there.

T: Do you find it challenging jumping mediums like that or is it something you like to do?

M: I like to do it. I mean, to be honest, I’m very restless. I always think I could do with long periods of rest but when I get them I’m really anxious.

T: I would never have guessed that from the list of things you’ve got on the go ...

M: I do some painting and I find that very restful, I can switch off and concentrate in a different way. I mean, you know, I’m a very lucky man. All of my Christmases keep coming at once. I’ve been offered all kinds of things that it is very hard to say no to, because having spent a long time without them you want to grab more. But what I’m trying to do is rationalize a little bit more, to make sure that I don’t end up spreading myself too thinly. That’s the danger. It is hard when these exciting things pop up … but it’s going extremely well and I think I’m coping at the moment.

Last year an awful lot of things that I’ve been working on for an awfully long time all came at once. Towards the end of the year my novel came out, the League film was finished, my Dr. Who episode was finished. But I’d been working on the film and novel for over two years, the novel for three. And Dr. Who was all of last year. But it suddenly looked like … I was doing interviews about the book and they were like, “You’ve done this, and this, and this …” but if they’d talked to me about six months before none of them would have been finished.

T: Well, all of those and I’ve got three more left to cover. What can you tell me about Funland?

M: Funland? Oh.

T: Has it got a director yet?

M: Well, for me this is a very different kind of project because it’s Jeremy’s. [Jeremy Dyson. League co-founder, co-writer and producer.] Jeremy is writing it with Simon Ashdown [EastEnders writer], so there’s no relationship to me there. I did the read-through, which got it commissioned, and as far as I know I’m in the series. But not very much, because I actually asked not to be because of commitments. I think I might be kind of book-ending it. But I don’t know very much about it. It’s not my baby, and it’s actually very nice just to treat it as an acting assignment. We’re doing it sometime in the spring, in Blackpool, but I don’t really know very much about how the series has developed.

T: If I remember right I saw in the press release that this is from a new branch of the BBC that’s trying to link established artists with young up and comers.

M: Right, yes.

T: That’s pretty fantastic, that the BBC does things like that. Do you know who the younger people are who are involved in this?

M: I don’t because … there was a wonderful cast at the read-through but I have no idea how many of them will actually be able to stick with it. Or whether, as story lines develop, they will actually be right for it. That’s often the way. You get people together to try and sell your idea but when it finally comes to it they just might not be available.

One of the mysterious things about Dr. Who is how people on the outside have all these theories about this, that and the other person and their approach to whatever and the weird thing is you could have your ideal Doctor in mind for all of your life but when you finally get the chance to do it, they’re doing a film. It comes down to things like that in the end. No matter how hard you try someone just might not be there, or might not be interested, or have changed their mind …

T: It’s like the perpetual speculation about the next James Bond. It just never ends. Every week there’s a new rumor.

M: Who is it this time?

T: It’s back to Brosnan, actually, last time I noticed. The guy from Nip/Tuck turned them down; Clive Owen apparently wants no part of it, which is shocking to me …

M: That’s not true.

T: Really? That’s what’s being reported.

M: I’m sure Clive Owen would leap at the chance.

T: I look at Clive Owen and those things he did for BMW and that man was born to be James Bond.

M: You think so? I think he’s too common. He looks good, but when he opens his mouth I think, “No, he hasn’t got it.”

T: I think he could go back to the Connery style, put a bit of grit back into it.

M: Interesting.

T: He’s the best of the rumors I’ve seen, anyway. Certainly better than those ‘Young Bond’ rumors that were floating around saying they wanted to sign Orlando Bloom. That would be hellish.

M: Of course it would. I think there’s a lot of studio pressure to cast younger just because of the demographics.

T: But it’s so wrong for the character.

M: Of course it is. I mean, if Bond doesn’t have any level of experience what has he got?

T: Ah …Woody Allen.

M: Woody Allen has been James Bond. Where have you been?

T: I saw a note somewhere that you got a small part in a Woody Allen film.

M: That’s right, yes.

T: Is that Melinda and Melinda?

M: No, it’s a newer one. One he shot here.

T: I didn’t even know he had another one. Melinda and Melinda isn’t even out here, it comes in the spring or summer.

M: Well, that’s what he’s like. He can’t be stopped. Steve’s in it, too.

T: Really? How does Woody Allen know who you guys are?

M: Oh, he doesn’t. Of course he doesn’t. I read somewhere that I’d got a cameo and I say a cameo’s what you get if you’re John gielgud and they put your name in a box and you’re special. It’s not a cameo, it’s a small part. A tiny part.

As far as I can tell what happens is that he turns most of the casting responsibilities over to his casting director and, as he was shooting in England, they just got a lot of people in. That’s how it happened.

It was one of the most bizarre days of my life, I have to say. Waiting in this country house, practicing ping-pong all morning, and then suddenly he arrived and there we were. Obviously I was like, “Oh my god, here we are …” but then I became completely fearless, nerveless, because I was like, “This is never going to happen again. What are they going to do, fire me?” I became almost euphoric. I spent the entire day playing ping-pong with Scarlet Johansson and made up my entire part.

T: There are worse ways to spend a day.

M: Apparently. Jonathan Rhys-Meyers came in, that pleased me more. But, you know, I got these pink pages with “They play table tennis.” And that’s all they said. So I improvised my lines. He seemed happy, we shot it a few times and I went home. That was it.

T: That’ll be curious to see. He’s such an archetypal American director that it’ll be interesting to see what he does with England.

M: Oh, absolutely. There were people in it who have quite major parts who had no idea what was going on. So we’ll see. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if the scene suddenly starts with Scarlet Johansson putting her bat down and me disappearing out of the room, but it’s a good dinner party story already.

T: Okay. The last one of the other projects, at least the last one that I’m aware of, is the radio thing. Nebulous.

M: Oh, yes! Premiered last week and is on tonight, actually.

T: And that’s another one where you’re just an actor, correct?

M: Actually, no. I devised it with Graeme Duff over the past three years, if not more. We started preparing it as a TV project and then we decided to kind of follow the route that had worked well for the League and a lot of other things. I said, “You know, we should try and make it less spoofy and more of a sitcom.” So we spent a lot of time working on the roots of it to make sure it was a proper funny cast of funny characters who worked together as a team and had adventures, rather than working at it from the spoof end although it is quite spoof-y in its sci-fi-ness. But we wanted it to be so that you could actually sit in a room, in a set, and watch them. So we worked on all that background stuff and then devising story lines and then Graeme wrote them with additional material by moi. It’s gone off extremely well. Can you get the BBC Radio Four website?

T: Yeah, you can stream it off of there.

M: Right. It might change tonight to the next episode but you can listen to it there on ‘Listen Again’. I was in Canada for the first airing, obviously, but I got texted saying we got some excellent reviews, which is very gratifying.

T: Now, what are the other guys doing in all of this down time? I know Steve has been involved with Blackpool and has a small part in the Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy …

M: That’s right, yes. In fact we did some voices, all three of us did some voices for the Vogons in Hitch Hikers.

T: Oh, really? Oh, that’s excellent.

M: I got to say “Resistance is useless!”

T: Oh, man, I am such a fan of those. That would have me tripping out for days if I got to do something like that.

M: It’s fucking fantastic. It’s very European. I thought it would be somehow Disneyfied but it looks really sort of dirty.

T: I’m really pleased with what I’ve seen of the visuals so far. So that’s Steve. But I haven’t seen a thing of what reece has been doing lately.

M: He’s shooting a film in a couple of weeks but he’s been on baby duty for the past few months. He’s got a new one. That takes it out of you. To be honest we’ve been so far out of it doing the movie, now with the post-production and anticipating the publicity, that there just hasn’t been a whole lot of time.

T: Okay, so on to the League. The horror influence. Was that something that was there originally or did it gradually come in to things? Was it a shared influence?

M: A shared love, absolutely. But it was never a conscious thing, we never thought, “There’s a gap in the market for gothic horror comedy.” I always laugh at that documentary on the second series DVD saying, “A blend that’s interesting: comedy and horror!” as if it’s actually a recipe. I think more horror has crept in, actually, because originally we were very keen to make it feel as though Royston Vasey was a slightly skewed but real northern place, with characters like Les McQueen …

T: And that seems to be the whole point of Benjamin as well.

M: Yes, the normality of it. But I think there were always elements that were quite horrific and there has become a lot more of that. I think there is a lot more gothic-ness in the second series, probably a little too much. I think we slightly ran away with ourselves with all the flashing lightning and things. But we did have the Christmas Special bubbling in the background, then, which is obviously a tribute to our favorite childhood horror films.

It’s a huge thing. We all watched the same films, sometimes on the same nights. There have been times when we’ve been able to pinpoint that we were all watching a certain screening of a certain film.

T: The show is really, really striking visually, especially for something coming off of the stage and radio. When you were trying to figure out what this thing looked like was that primarily the group of you or did the director come into play a little bit more?

M: It was very much a group thing. We were all very excited about going to TV but we also, with a kind of cinematic vision, wanted to make it look as different as possible. But having said that we were never aware of what things can look like and we were very blessed to have Steve Bendelak [director] and Rob Kitzmann [director of photography] because they are just absolutely extraordinary with images.

I remember watching rushes of the first few scenes we shot – I think it was Pauline and Hilary Briss. Hilary looked like this gorgeous European film and Pauline looked like a Ken Loach movie and we were just like, “God, this is fantastic.” We all got very excited about the possibilities.

The location was decided on because it was this rough looking high street in the middle of this extraordinary landscape. One thing that we have definitely been responsible for is making people appreciate that the north of England is actually very beautiful. Bleakly beautiful, but very beautiful. Some of the accidental shots that made it in, like the rain on the moors, are just beautiful.

T: As the show went on it seems like you made a pretty deliberate effort, from season to season, to shake things up a little bit. Especially at the end … with season three you killed off a lot of characters and with both season three and the Christmas Special you changed the whole format of the show. Is there a degree of fear of repeating yourself?

M: [some of this response lost due to a problem with my recorder] Yes. The Special was a special, and thus not really a format change, but the third series, I think in retrospect, was too dramatically changed. A lot of people think it’s the best one. Some people absolutely hate it.

I reckon that if we’d done the same storylines but simply had a little visit to each one each week [Season Three ran as a series of six seemingly independent, concurrently running story lines all linked by a car crash at the end of each episode] i.e. you start episode one with Pauline in prison, followed by Lance looking for his arm, followed by Geoff having a bit of a row with Mike, followed by Alvin … you know? And then in the second week you do the second installments of each you could make six episodes with six storylines in each rather than doing one-off stories, I think it would have been a lot less of a jolt for people.

But that’s not to say … I’m very, very proud of that series and think it was a very bold thing to do but the curious thing is that somewhere in the mix we forgot that as a rule of thumb those episodic, kind of anthology things, are never liked as well as things with a serial element. Victoria Woods did six one-offs and Steve Coogan did Coogan’s Run and I think we convinced ourselves that because the accident was binding them together that the series felt more bound together than it actually did. We’re really very proud of that series but I can see why it might have been too much for some people to take because in terms of format it was a real kick in the ass.

T: What are your own favorite characters to play?

M: First you have to tell me what you think about them. Do three.

T: When I am introducing the show to people I always start with Dr. Chinnery, because he’s pretty much an immediate hook. Those things can stand alone and I think he summarizes parts of the show pretty well because there’s an innocence to him but you know that every time he’s on screen something just horrible is about to happen. I think Tubbs and Edward pretty much go without saying. I loved the Dentons in season one. They made me laugh really, really hard. I like Hilary Briss a fair bit … those would be the big ones.

M: Well, my favorite to play is probably Mickey. He comes very easily to me and I love completely disappearing in the makeup. Some people didn’t realize it was me, which is a great compliment, they thought somebody else had been brought in. But Mickey’s great fun to play. That sort of mix of pathos and idiocy is very attractive. Les McQueen I like to play. There were some I liked but were actually not comfortable. Hilary is a very uncomfortable part to play. The padding and the jumpers and things up my nose …

T: You did Season Two when the whole mad cow thing was at its peak, didn’t you?

M: We started it! And foot and mouth! It’s all Hilary Briss!

T: We’re still dealing with that here.

M: Oh, god … I’m very sorry.

T: Were you ever in a situation as a group where you had to cut characters or scenes because you thought they were just a little too disturbing?

M: Not really. We kind of self-censor. There’s one bit in the extras of series three when that dildo goes off in Alvin’s face and it was just … the special effects people used this chunky wall paper paste that was just all over me. But it is absolutely hysterical, I have to say. But we weren’t allowed, that’s one of the rare things where the BBC actually intervened. We shot another one because we thought that take might have been too much but we really wanted to use the really gross one. But in terms of cutting things, no. We only really cut when things weren’t working or for time.

People are always banging on about how dark it is and we always say, “Oh, come on …” And then we watch it again and sometimes I’m quite taken aback by all that’s going on. The thing that I always think is really something is Papa Lazarou kidnapping Bernice’s mother in the Christmas Special. That’s absolutely terrifying.

T: Well a few of those moments in the special hit a really, really good balance. Bernice never really struck me much during the show and the special really fleshed her out. And the same thing with Herr Lipp. Herr Lipp was in some cases a one trick kind of guy and you completely turned him around in the special and I think his section is pretty exceptional.

M: Oh, absolutely. We really wanted to use the special to flesh some things out. Chinnery’s the same. Chinnery’s a constant one joke character but we wanted to find out why it happened to him, while at the same time having fun with a period story. But, yeah, it’s very much about trying to find hidden depths. But that flashback with the screaming child and Papa Lazarou is absolutely ghastly.

T: Now that you guys are moving into features does that mean the end of television work?

M: I don’t know, but never say never. The BBC have asked us for another series and it’s dangerous to rule these things out because it makes people think you’re dead. But the thing is that the film has taken two years. We had a great time and we’re very, very proud of it and I imagine we’d like to do another one. But it’s a balance. We couldn’t do another series if we wanted to start writing another film now. There’s just no time. And we’re hoping to tour again, which obviously takes up an awful lot of time.

If we did do another series it feels like it would be something very different. What that is I’ve no idea, but after having spent all that time trying to develop a format over successive series it would just be very odd if we went back to doing a sketch show.

T: Do you ever tour outside of the UK?

M: We have. We did a week in New York and we’re always being asked to Australia, but it’s the same sort of thing. It’s always timing. The curious thing about that is we actually went to New York the week after we finished at Drury Lane, playing in front of three and a half thousand people, and we went to an off-off-off-Broadway place. And it’s like starting from scratch. It’s great fun and we had a really good response but you sort of think, “I already have my career in Britain and I can concentrate on making that flourish or move to America and try there.” Because, really, to get any of the word of mouth going you have to go back every two months. They’re always asking us back and we’d love to go but you have to ask what the benefits are apart from the fun of it. If we could get a fan base there it would help with the DVDs and the film and those sorts of things, but the commitment is the problem. You cannot split your focus like that or else you end up in the middle of the ocean.

T: I think the only British comic to really pull it off is Eddie Izzard.

M: Yes, exactly, and Eddie made that decision. He lives there now. He said “I’m going to conquer America”, and he did. And he started in the same New York theater we played. He built to bigger venues and bigger venues and now he can come back here and play to huge houses. But it’s very different because stand ups develop a stand up show and we have to develop six episodes and all kinds of things.

T: Okay, the film. What can you tell me in terms of the plot?

M: [pause]

T: Or are you allowed to tell me anything?

M: [laughs] Well, some of it’s already got out …

T: Well, I’ve read little bits about some time travel. I’ve read something that says basically Royston Vasey is some sort of alternate plane of reality and some of the residents are now trying to break their way into the real world.

M: All correct. But it’s not really time travel. There’s no time travel. There’s a historical element to it but they don’t actually travel in time. Because it’s not Dr. Who, naturally. But trans-dimensional travel is another possibility. You can probably describe the script as “Six characters in search of an author meets The Neverending Story.” Yes. Royston Vasey is facing an apocalypse and through various means some of the characters realize that they are not quite what they think they are. It is called The League of Gentlemen’s Apocalypse, not League of Gentlemen: Apocalypse or anything else.

T: When you were making the transition from TV to film were you able to bring some of your crew with you?

M: Yes! For budgetary reasons we had to shoot it in Ireland, which was fine in terms of Royston Vasey because of the way the script was written. There wasn’t that much of the town in the script. It takes place in some new parts that we’ve never seen and apart from some bits of the high street there wasn’t much. We only had to shoot there for a day and a half, so we never had to pretend that Ireland was Royston Vasey. But because of that we were required to use quite a lot of Irish crew, who were wonderful. We used a new production designer, Richard Bridgland, who did Alien vs. Predator, of all things. We used Daniel Phillips, who did the makeup on the Christmas Special, Steve Bendelak, Rob Kitzmann – our director and DP – and a lot of other new people.

T: Would I be right in assuming that this is going to be a fairly linear story rather than something sketch based?

M: It is, yes.

T: How does that change your approach?

M: It was very different. It was an extremely enjoyable experience, but it was very different. We spent a lot of time on the initial things just thrashing out what it could possibly be and then started to think about some specifics, the opening scenes. There are a couple of sketchy elements to get it starting, trying not to frighten the horses, but they’re all combined into a narrative. So we wrote it in a rather different way. Much more than ever it was all four of us in a room, and we’d re-write each other’s stuff. It worked extremely well. There was one sort of mini crisis point where there was some fighting like “I prefer our version of that scene to your version,” but we got through it and absolutely benefited from the amount of time that we’d been off telly while working on this. I think it’s extremely strong.

T: Is there one character, or a group of characters who become dominant in this to carry the thread of the story?

M: Yes, there are. There are three.

T: And you’re not going to tell me who they are, are you?

M: No.

T: Also online I heard some mention of stop-motion monsters.

M: That’s right!

T: Really! You going all Harryhausen on us?

M: Well, actually, we asked Ray Harryhausen to design them.

T: Really!?!

M: Yes, I spoke to him, which was a hell of a coup. He was very sweet, but he did say to us, “I am retired now.” But, yes, we do have stop motion monsters, which is incredible, in this.

What happened with this is – it’s like what I said before about all my Christmases coming at once – that nobody’s going to ask us to be in a film with stop motion monsters any more so we decided to do one ourselves.

T: You have to make your own!

M: Yes, we do, all the time! And there’s a strong disaster film element in this as well, for precisely the same reason. We love those movies. And the notion of running around a burning building in a sooty tuxedo with our bow ties undone is very special to us.

T: Who did the stop motion work on it?

M: It’s a company called Loose Moose. They’re designed by McKinnon Saunders. They’re kind of old associates of Steve Bendelak’s from when he did Spitting Image. They’re obviously all Harryhausen nuts.

T: I don’t think you could do that kind of animation and not be.

M: Well, quite. It was like the stuff I did yesterday: almost every special effects person in the room got started into film from watching Dr. Who. If you’re going to do that kind of animation where do you start? Jason and the Argonauts.

T: You’ve already said you’re not going to tell me who the key characters are but I know from the set pictures Jeremy posted that you’ve brought Edward back.

M: Oh, yes.

T: You’ve resurrected Tubbs and Edward!

M: Again! How tiresome! [laughs] The thing with making a film is there are a lot of things you’ve got to bear in mind in many ways. In many ways the film exists in a little bubble outside of the series, continuity wise. Because it has to. The big thing we wanted to do was to make a film that stood on its own two feet.

T: So this isn’t chronologically after season three.

M: No, no, not at all. If you’ve never heard of the series, and obviously many people haven’t, then you should still be able to get what the film is about. Obviously if you are a fan and know the characters they will already mean more, but what we tried very hard to do was make sure you can get it even if you don’t know them.

And also we live in a world where it’s very difficult to raise the money for a film and, I’m not using this as an excuse, but we couldn’t make a League of Gentlemen film without Tubbs and Edward. But happily, in terms of the plot, it works. It works beautifully. So it wasn’t forced or crowbarred in, it was a happy decision, but it is a totally different thing where you’re having to convince people to give you the money to make the film. A lot of it is based on DVD sales. These days the actual theatrical release of a film is almost insignificant. Not for the fan, but they make so much money from the DVD sales that that’s where the bulk of the financing comes from. So Tubbs and Edward are there. In fact, if you go to see Team America or Meet the Fockers in this country as of Friday the teaser trailer for our film will be on there.

T: Is that trailer going to be turning up online?

M: I don’t know. I should think so.

T: Have you created new characters for the film or are you basically stocking the film with people from the show?

M: No, there are new characters.

T: Are we going to see many of the old people? I mentioned before that I really like the Dentons, and I’ve always been wondering what happened to them after getting locked in the basement.

M: The Dentons aren’t in it. They were, actually, in an earlier draft. There are earlier drafts with lots of people. Again with the commercial issues, this is the same thing for us. Ultimately it’s fine because the film doesn’t require it but we certainly were hoping that we could stock Royston Vasey well with old characters. And not in terms of in jokes or anything like that, just that you would actually see, say, there was a scene in an early draft where Bernice goes to the off-license and Iris is working the till. To a casual viewer that’s just an ugly woman on the till, but if you’re a fan it repays your loyalty.

But unfortunately that was the first casualty of budget. We are meeting each other in this film more than we ever have before and the time it takes in terms of costume changes and make up changes – it was just impossible to have as many background appearances as we were hoping for. And it is a shame but there’s nothing you can do about it.

The other thing we had in mind very much is that, in terms of writing a film, is if it wasn’t a spin-off of a TV series you would, in any case, end up focusing on only a handful of characters. Because that’s what you do. You have your leads in the film and everyone else is on the periphery. It would’ve been nice to see Iris and Judy and Pop in the shop, because it would have colored it in in the background, but we just couldn’t afford it. Maybe next time.

The League of Gentlemen’s Apocalypse releases into UK theaters on April 22nd. Discussions for international releases are still ongoing. There’s nothing there yet, but when the time comes the film’s official web site will apparently be www.leagueofgentlemensapocalypse.co.uk