British television comedy has always embraced the surreal, from Michael Bentine through to Monty Python, The Young Ones and beyond. But has any other show been quite so off-the-wall weird as The League of Gentlemen, which emerged in January 1999 to ambush unsuspecting BBC Two audiences? 

Was it a sketch show or a sitcom? Why was there so much cross-dressing? Did any of this matter? The League of Gentlemen’s startling originality and outrageous quirkiness quickly found an audience and the series developed a cult following.

Ultimately, the show, which ran to three series, would lay the roots for the phantasmagorical world of Inside No 9. There has also been a feature film, The League of Gentlemen’s Apocalypse, stage shows, and a three-episode reprise in 2017 to mark the 20th anniversary of its Radio 4 debut.

A quarter of a century later, watching The League of Gentlemen’s classic opening episode, it’s tempting to ask: how did they get away with it? They, of course, being writer-performers Mark Gatiss, Steve Pemberton and Reece Shearsmith, and co-writer Jeremy Dyson. They had known one another since their late teens, having met while ­studying drama at Bretton Hall College of Education near Leeds.

Starting a story as a stranger arrives in a strange town is a narrative device older than the hills and pre-dates television. It’s a safe bet to say that no one has ever landed in a town quite like Royston Vasey before or since.

Expecting some healthy fell walking, the innocent hiker, Benjamin, is soon introduced to Royston Vasey’s bizarre inhabitants as he is driven off in a shocking-pink taxi. The driver’s kitten heels are the same colour as her cab.

This is the stuff of pantomime, but once Benjamin encounters Edward and Tubbs, owners of Royston Vasey’s local shop – bizarrely located on remote moorland far from the town – things take a more sinister turn. To say the pair are creepy is an understatement. Both sport pig noses and have a profound distrust of outsiders. “This is a local shop for local people, there’s nothing for you here!” became the show’s best-known catchphrase.

There is silliness but also a strong whiff of the macabre and an edginess that can be unsettling. Much, however, is laugh-out loud as norms are subverted. In episode one, a hearse is seen driving past with the word BASTARD spelt out in flowers on the coffin. Even the lame jokes usually work because of the brio the performers bring to them.

The League of Gentlemen exists at the outer limits of madcap humour; the shop-owners are, in fact, serial killers. However, the show’s journey to the small screen was well-trodden and ridiculously conventional. To quote that connoisseur of small-screen comedy Paul Jackson: “Four young men got together to produce a stage show… they took it to Edinburgh, and won the Perrier Award. They transferred it to radio and won a Sony award. They thought they’d have a go at television – they won a Bafta award, a Royal Television Society award and the Golden Rose of Montreux.”

Speaking in 2017, Shearsmith said he thought the show “too risky” to be commissioned in the digital era. “I don’t think The League of Gentlemen would be done now,” he told Digital Spy. Pemberton said the cost alone (all those costume changes and time spent in make-up) would rule it out. “It would struggle to be commissioned in today’s climate just because it’s such an expensive thing to do,” he said. 

The League of Gentlemen is not for the faint-hearted. Watch it if you dare.

The League of Gentlemen is on BBC iPlayer