Psychoville

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.

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.

Charge of the dark brigade

So. The plot thickens. I really didn't devote enough time to Psychoville last week. It's rapidly becoming clear that this might be the new Best Thing on Television, or at least the Best Thing on Thursday.

TV Review: Psychoville

Psychoville is one of the best looking shows on television at the moment.

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.

Now that Psychoville has given viewers a chance to recover from the shock of the unhinged, it has hit its stride in a big way. Admittedly, I've never been too bothered if comedies are not laugh-out-loud funny, provided there are strong characters and some sort of narrative to carry you along. Right from the start, Psychoville had an abundance of crazies caught up in a sinister story. But this episode - with its psychotic clown, its lecherous Snow White and the too-forgiving mother of a serial killer - is gloriously funny to boot.

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.

This is turning into the pick of BBC2's Thursday comedy line-up. Mitchell and Webb is becoming patchier and patchier, Krod Mandoon is stupid in a stupid way but Psychoville has begun to really hit its stride. The mix of terrible jokes (look out for Midget Gems) and character comedy is so well written that we can almost forget The League of Gentlemen. Almost. Except for the psychotic clown.

Psychoville episode two: 'You killed her'

Soft toys, dwarf humiliation and brawling clowns ... Just another week in Psychoville. Join us and chew the fat over the second episode.