It's been three years since Royston Vasey was last seen on television and now their creators return with the long-awaited big screen incarnation. Hardcore fans will no doubt already have reserved their opening night seats, but whether the film will have the mass appeal to make it a breakout hit along the lines of Ali G Indahouse or even Kevin and Perry Go Large remains to be seen. Apocalypse does have more than its fair share of laughs, although its central premise does have a familiar feel to it.
In typical in-joke style, the film opens with the elusive Jeremy Dyson (the only of the four creators who doesn't appear on screen and here played by Michael Sheen) being chased by two of the series' most loved and most repulsive characters, Edward and Tubbs. It seems that things are not at all well in Royston Vasey: the characters of the show have realised that their creators may be about to kill them off and have decided to take matters into their own hands, before Armageddon reigns on their acutely strange home town.
From Pirandello to The Purple Rose of Cairo, from Adaptation to The Truman Show, theatre and the cinema has long explored the sometimes blurry division between writer and subject. Apocalypse follows this path but doesn't really offer much new in terms of plot. Three of the show's central characters (Herr Lipp with his perpetual double entendres, the mysterious butcher Hilary Briss and the broken down Geoffrey Tipps) emerge into the real world of London intent on tracking down Messrs Gatiss, Pemberton and Shearsmith, and, Misery-style, forcing them to resurrect the show.
But the three writers and performers have already embarked on another project, much to the chagrin of the Royston rebels. When they discover that the League plan to make a spoof of films such as The Witchfinder General called The King's Evil they decide on emergency action. Hilary and Geoff kidnap Steve Pemberton and Herr Lipp goes to his house and attempts to live the life of his creator.
This is arguably the film's biggest success and best performance, thanks to Pemberton's intelligent and highly amusing turn as the camp German. While his perpetual puns keep the gag rate high, his gradual realisation that he is only a one-dimensional character at his master's whim gives the film its only real resonance. On the other hand some of the other set-pieces don't quite rise to the same level, notably the spoof sequences and a climax that takes a little too long to arrive and is barely believable even in this silly and heightened universe.
Ardent fans may find something to cheer about in seeing some of the most unlikely characters given leading role status. But given the groundbreaking work the four have previously delivered, it's a shame that their big screen debut is really only as good as a decent regular programme from the series. But one suspects the project has enough momentum to gives its cinema run a good shot as well as making it a hugely popular stocking filler come Christmas.
