Steve Pemberton

It is possible to have too much macabre weirdness in one programme. Created, written and largely performed by Reece Shearsmith and Steve Pemberton from The League Of Gentlemen, Psychoville is an exercise in just how far you can push dark comedy.

To this end the pair have assembled a rogues gallery of grotesques, scattered them the length and breadth of the country, and set a mysterious blackmailer on their trail. "I know what you did," ran his first anonymous correspondence to the seemingly unconnected group and, without even knowing what they're accused of, you wouldn't put it past them.

Psychoville is definitely an acquired taste, and I'm afraid my appetite was sated halfway through the second episode, with the introduction of ghoulish conjoined twins with symmetrical facial blemishes. For me it was a case of two freaks too far.

It is very well done, atmospheric and beautifully performed, but the misanthropic tone of the humour is relentless and, after a while, a bit tedious. The introduction of a little shade would have been welcome, even different shades of black.

The macabre comedy gets funnier by the week, as we come to know more about the individual characters. Tonight, for example, we get Mr Jelly's backstory: how he wound up as an embittered, one-handed clown. Also, unhinged midwife Joy's husband George (Steve Pemberton) lets slip that his wife was once "put away". The most hilarious scenario of all, though, is when David Sowerbutts (Steve Pemberton) and his mum Maureen (Reece Shearsmith) dispatch their next victim disguised as beauticians. A must.

Reece Shearsmith and Steve Pemberton's eerie comedy just keeps getting better. That's largely because the plot, in the grotesque manner of a cockroach scuttling for safety across a kitchen floor after the light has been turned on, is accelerating. Tonight, that means a murder most horrid, backstory to explain the tension between Mr Jelly and Mr Jolly, a bidding war between Lomax and the Crabtree sisters, and the appearance of a video in the post. Worth watching just for the soft play pursuit scene.

I am having to watch Psychoville (BBC2) from behind the sofa, lest the equivalent of The League of Gentlemen's Papa Lazarou (the mere thought of whom is enough to have me weeping with fear) emerges. But it is corking stuff. Robert the dwarf has turned out to be telekinetic. Joy is feeding her baby on blood and punching anyone who dares to suggest that the infant strapped to her chest is in fact a doll, while the serial killer-obsessed David "I like strangles" Sowerbutts and his mother Maureen are about to fulfil what one can only assume is a lifelong dream by murdering someone. That's if they can agree on a method. "I like drills." "You're not doing that, I've got a thumping headache."

So far, I am managing to cope with both the one-handed, embittered clown Mr Jelly and the eyeless (not just blind, but eyeless, very, very eyeless) toy collector Mr Lomax, who has taken on Tea Leaf as an employee (contractual terms: "No girls, no smoking and no meat pies") to help him track down on eBay the one Beanie missing from his collection. I am rapidly approaching the limits of my endurance, yet fear we are nowhere near exhausting writers Reece Shearsmith and Steve Pemberton's appalling imaginations. I suspect that when the mysterious blackmailer who is stalking them is finally revealed, none of us will ever sleep soundly again.

Like The League Of Gentlemen turned up past 11 - which is a good thing, by the way - Reece Shearsmith and Steve Pemberton's grotesque blackmail comedy continues. Tonight, there's the revelation of a terrible secret from the past, which leads on to the discovery that toys can be "commodities" and that dwarf porn is issued under the Midget Gems moniker. God alone knows how it's all going to turn out, but the journey's the thing.

This macabre comedy thriller from two of the creators of the acclaimed League of Gentleman continues tonight, and Reece Shearsmith and Steve Pemberton's vision gets curiouser and curiouser. The plot centres around a weird blackmail plot, and Mr Lomax (Pemberton) is still trying to complete his unusual collection of miscellaneous "commodities". That means - this is the internet age, after all - an eBay bidding war. Meanwhile, there are the unfortunate events that took place at the Murder Mystery evening to cover up, and a mysterious black-gloved figure contacts Joy (Dawn French) with another chilling message from her past.

What makes this a very special sort of sitcom is that Reece Shearsmith and Steve Pemberton dream up such horribly sinister "sits" for their "com". And the fact that we're on edge at the unpleasantness of it all makes us that bit quicker to laugh when the jokes come. It's a balancing act, but it's one they pull off cleverly, with their eyeless collector, eBay-obsessed conjoined twins and Joy, a deranged Bristolian midwife. Dawn French is great as Joy, cuddling her fake-baby "Freddie" in a papoose and, at one point, filling his drinking bottle from a hospital blood bag. Other highlights tonight include a fabulously daft fight over a Punch and Judy booth and a scene where murderous David Sowerbutts runs a bath in which to drown his next victim, urged on by his mum. This week's mystery messages, delivered to the various apparently unconnected characters by a masked figure, is simply "You killed her" - though naturally, we're no nearer to finding out who or why.

A message from Steve Pemberton

The Twitter reviews were largely very good, though I have to take issue with the critics who dismissed it as 'banal' or 'lacking in plot'. Whatever you think of Psychoville, I'm pretty sure it isn't bland or storyless. But you have to take the good, bad and indifferent reviews in the same spirit I suppose.

It might have links to The League of Gentlemen, but Reece Shearsmith and Steve Pemberton, two of that august number, have managed to craft something in Psychoville that feels distinctive in its own right, despite some of the trappings of the former. While the original League had a rotten core at the centre of the dark comedy, there's a surprisingly tragic heart here, exemplified by Joy, Dawn French's doll obsessed midwife. It's hard not to feel sorry for this woman, but at the same time. She's absolutely terrifying, charged with the potential energy to go off and do something abhorrent. Chilling, brilliant and funny.

There was no creative exhaustion evident in Psychoville - the new project from Reece Shearsmith and Steve Pemberton from The League of Gentlemen. Psychoville has a purposeful air to it: as if someone had said: "Right, lads. The plot is: it's a sitcom about psychopaths! No messing about - and let's make sure we've got a scene with an incestuous mother and son scratching each other's eczema before the ten-minute mark, OK?"

As with The League of Gentlemen, most of the characters are played by Shearsmith and Pemberton, in a variety of wigs, prosthetics and pendulous rubber bosoms. It's a bit like a collegiate version of The Nutty Professor, but with jokes about bestiality. Well, just with jokes, really. I don't remember there being any in The Nutty Professor.

Darkest moment so far: Mr Jelly. He's a clown and children's entertainer. "Mr Jelly Keeps Kids Quiet" is the logo painted on the side of his car. Mr Jelly comes to children's parties and combs their hair until they cry. Then he puts lipstick on their eyes.