I’m only 3 episodes into the new season, but what a great, twisted little tale it is, and I’m loving it as much as the first!
I’m so glad to hear that this show was well received in England, enough so that it had been renewed for another year.
From The League of Gentlemen creators Reece Shearsmith and Steve Pemberton, they bring you season two of this British dark comedy.
• Psychoville is a dark character comedy mystery in which five different characters are strangely linked.
The main characters are: Mr. Jelly, an embittered one-handed clown who makes balloon animals with his hook; Joy, a desperately misguided midwife; Robert, a love struck dwarf; Mr. Lomax, a blind avaricious collector; and David Sowerbutts, a serial-killer-obsessed man-child.
All five are at first seemingly unconnected, but we know they share at least one thing in common... despite having different backgrounds, different interests, and coming from different parts of the country, they have each been sent an anonymous, black-edged card marked with the words: "I know what you did..."
As the series progresses, we learn more about the background of the main characters, and discover they all spent time together at Ravenhill Hospital.
In Series 2, a locket with the letter 'K' on it becomes key. Police Detective Finney and shadowy Grace Andrews are amongst those who are desperate to get their hands on this item of jewelry.
I’ve really taken a liking to this series, and can’t wait until I finish the rest of the episodes for this year. I was hoping that I could find them available all online to watch, but so far have only found the first 3 episodes. I really wish that I knew all of the inside references to other movies and TV shows, apparent in this series, as I’m slowing cluing into them, and could appreciate it even more if so. If you haven’t had the chance to check this series out, do yourself the favor and do so, and make sure you check out their Halloween special as well, which doesn’t exactly fall within the story line of season one, but rather, uses just some of eclectic group of characters to tell some smaller tales of horror. Ala: Twilight Zone-esque
It’s great that a show like this can exists in a different country, because the truth is that it would never have had much of a chance here in the states. I don’t know what it is, but it seems like outside the norm shows don’t hold up in America, outside of a one year run. With the exception of shows like “Lost”, can you think of any highly revered American shows within the last few years that fall within the unusual category that are continuing strong? I suppose shows like Metalocalypse, Venture Brother’s, ATHF, Squidbillies fall into this category, but they are definitely of a lower budget, and relying on much smaller audiences for their success. Other than that, no prime time shows come to mind for me, if you can think of any please let me know as I’d love to check them out.
I think that Psychoville’s dark sense of humor is what would be the ultimate factor of failure in America, completely off base with the typical state side viewer. However, I still do appreciate that channels like Comedy Central and Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim have made attempts to license these types of British odd ball shows, Garth Marenghi's Darkplace, League of Gentleman, Mighty Boosh, Look Around You, Little Britain) but still without much success I’m afraid to say.
Oh well, at least we can always rely on England for bizarrely dark humor. Cheers!
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