This is rare, but I felt I should review the BBC series 'Psychoville'. I have just finished the final episode, and feel that people should give this 7 part series a chance.
It revolves around a group of mentally unhunged characters in different parts of the country receiving death threat letters, and slowly being brought together for a central season finale. Now I will mention that I wasn't a huge fan of league of gentleman, not sure why, but it just never got me hooked. Whereas this has a really nice central plot weaving through the episodes to its dark climax. There are moments where you can see it reverting to the classic shock/weird tactics of the league, but in many ways, this show is very different, the characters evolve a lot stronger, and rather than watching an episode then changing channel, you really want to know what this story is leading to. The choice of actors were superb, Dawn French was spectacular in a similar vain to her 'murder most horrid' period characters. Steve Pemberton showed his depth of characters, David was obvious for him to play, but his part of Lomax was surprising, and heartfelt. My third favourite choice was of michael Fry as 'tealeaf', his nature of always wondering what the hell he was doing, yet continuing to help just to get Lomax the 'commodity' was heart-warming in it's own way.
Now, the part I have least been looking forward to, in a review, we have to cut out the negative parts of this show. The first of these is Davids mum, I felt she was too much of a comic relief character, she needs to be entertaining, but the comments were just a little too insane which took away from the dark chills the story was portraying to me. She just needed to be a little more specific with her motions and comments, rather than shuffeling, every movement doing something, and ever calculating, possibly bringing her into the finale due to her over controlling nature. My only other real gripe was the love story around Robert, again I felt this was edging towards 'the league' with the porn references, Roberts story had a lot of potential, he thought he had this power, why the hell wouldn't he use it to run the show, to get the lead roles? Instead, we see him naked, and gurning.
This said, the finale was overall excellent, but it didn't quite settle well with me, not as far is story is concerned, but directorial, I felt certain elements were rushed, and that it just ended. The series was 7 episodes, which is a little strange, I feel that maybe the original plan was for an 8 episode series, but they couldn't quite stretch it or get the funding.
Overall, I really hope for a second series of this, if only to know who survived, and what the hell that necklace was about.
Watch the trailer
