ROYSTON VASEY COMES TO LIFE

REVIEWED - THE LEAGUE OF GENTLEMEN'S APOCALYPSE: THIS hilarious big-screen outing for the League of Gentlemen begins with Jeremy Dyson, one quarter of the gothically inclined comedy troupe, discovering an elderly lady sitting on his lavatory. "I've just made a little brown fish," she barks.

By this stage, fans of the BBC series may already be clutching their sides and making wheezing noises. Such enthusiasts will be aware that Dyson helps write the show, but does not appear in it, and they will thus understand that the casting of an actor - Michael Sheen - to play him is a joke in itself. The lady is Tubbs Tattsyrup, the homicidal proprietress of the Local Shop, and she has entered the real world to persuade the League to continue writing her character.

The film has a self-contained plot, but, as that summary suggests, a great deal may be lost on viewers not familiar with the original show. One can only suggest that such readers pick up the DVD of the first series at the earliest opportunity. The League of Gentlemen's Apocalypse is a highly imaginative piece of work that manages the tricky business of opening out the material without making it seem thinly stretched. Equal parts Flann O'Brien, MR James and Dick Emery, Apocalypse is - if we may damn with faint praise - as good as TV spin-offs get.

After that prologue we move back to Royston Vasey, the northern town in which the characters do their terrible things, to discover the Reverend Bernice musing over a set of murals predicting the locale's imminent destruction. Geoff (the one who gets everything wrong) Herr Lipp (the predatory entendre fanatic) and Hillary Briss (the town butcher) pass through a mysterious portal into somewhere we know to be our own universe.

They learn that they are merely characters in a TV series and that four pompous writers - the League of Gentlemen - have tired of their adventures and are now working on an over-ambitious period romp titled The King's Evil.

Horror fanatics - "How many killings are there in it?" - can congratulate themselves on identifying The King's Evil as a nod to the period horror epics of the British studio Tigon Pictures and will recognise David Warner's role in the film-within-a-film as a version of Bride of Frankenstein's Dr Pretorius.

This sort of fan-boy larking-about was to be expected from the League, but there are surprisingly moving moments in here as well. If you can forget the fact that Herr Lipp once buried a beautiful boy alive, you may feel sorry for him when he realises that he is nothing but a bad pun. Such odd little moments, fitted into an intricate, satisfying structure, ensure the film is something more than an exercise in arch game playing.

If, however, you need any further persuasion to buy a ticket, be aware the project was filmed largely in Ireland and that it is a co-production of our own Hell's Kitchen Pictures. That's right. It's a local film.