Steve Pemberton Movies

Mr. Bean -- the stick-legged goofball man-child created by Rowan Atkinson on television in the early '90s, and in the 1997 feature Bean -- undertakes his second cinematic adventure in the comic romp Mr. Bean's Holiday. Growing thoroughly sick of the wet, cold, and clammy London weather, Mr. Bean (Atkinson) finds just the right tonic when he wins a trip to sunny southern France, all expenses paid, with a new digital video camera to accompany him. However, he runs headfirst into a series of outrageous and unpleasant situations, such as winding up in a French restaurant where a maître d’ (Jean Rochefort) convinces him to eat bizarre varieties of seafood that he's never before encountered, and discovering that the "Very Fast Train" certainly lives up to its name. Eventually, Mr. Bean (accompanied by a Russian traveling companion whom he meets along his journey) stumbles onto the French Riviera and spoils the latest movie production of snobbish, egomaniacal filmmaker Carson Clay (Willem Dafoe) -- little realizing that his own klutzy video footage will accidentally end up in Clay's film and be screened at the upcoming Cannes Film Festival. Unlike the first big-screen incarnation of Atkinson's character, Mr. Bean's Holiday adheres more closely to the formula of the original series by rendering the character almost completely mute. ~ Nathan Southern, All Movie Guide

A handsome working man living in a small village in the south of England finds his romantic overtures to a beautiful, newly arrived schoolteacher challenged by a barrage of wealthy suitors in this tale of rural romance that launched the career of writer Thomas Hardy. Fancy Day is a woman of striking beauty who comes from a wealthy family background. Dick Dewey is an honest working man who longs to win the heart of the lovely newcomer. Though his sincere efforts to win Fancy over are received with encouraging grace by the kind-hearted schoolteacher, Dick soon finds that he's not the only man in town attempting to win her hand in marriage. Reverend Maybold, Farmer Shiner, and a local landowner are also hoping to charm Fancy to the alter, and even if Dick does manage to out-charm the rest, there's no guarantee that Fancy's father will even give approval to the union. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide

Everyone's favorite collie returns to the screen -- and to her native home back in Britain -- in director Charles Sturridge's faithful adaptation of author Eric Knight's sentimental kid and canine novel Lassie Come Home. When Lassie saves a fox from the hunting hounds of the duke of Rudling (Peter O'Toole), the captivated nobleman becomes obsessed with the idea of purchasing the collie for his adoring granddaughter Cilla (Hester Odgers). Unfortunately for Rudling, the pooch already has a loving family in the form of kindly miner Sam Carraclough (John Lynch), his wife, Sarah (Samantha Morton), and their young son, Joe (Jonathan Mason). When Sam is laid off from his job, however, he is forced to sell the loyal dog to the duke in order to put food on the family table. Incensed at the dog's repeated attempts to escape and seek out her original loving family, the villainous duke charges kennel-keeper Eddie Hynes (Steve Pemberton) with the task of teaching Lassie how to stay as World War II looms ever more heavy on the horizon. When the dogs of war finally stop barking and start biting, Rudling beats a hasty retreat to the safety of northern Scotland with both the child and the canine. Realizing that her newfound companion is far from the people she cares about most, Cilla later helps her ever-loyal four-legged friend escape from the family's heavily fortified compound so that she may begin the 500-mile journey back home to Yorkshire. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide

Originally telecast by BBC2 from January 14 through February 18, 2000, season two of the dizzily irreverent British sitcom The League of Gentlemen consists of six half-hour episodes. As was the case in the BBC radio series On the Town that preceded it, the TV version takes place in the bizarre provincial town of Royston Vasey, with all principal characters played by Mark Gatiss, Steve Pemberton, and Reece Shearsmith. The season opener, "Destination: Royston Vasey," finds the tiny community invaded by Papa Lazerou's Pandemonum Carnival. (As if this town needs any more pandemonium!) Next is "Lust for Royston Vasey," wherein Herr Lipp (Pemberton) and a group of German exchange students manage to match the locals in weirdness, and then some. (This is the one in which incompetent vet Dr. Chimmery [Gatiss] electrocutes a pondful of carp while performing oral surgery on a toad.) Also: "A Plague on Royston Vasey" deals with such esoterica as a sex-fetish magazine, a bear trap, and a quota of "twelfty"; over-obsessive Uncle Harvey (Pemberton) and Aunt Val (Gatiss) then celebrate their annual Nude Day; and Mayor Vaughn (guest star Roy "Chubby" Brown) humiliates himself in public television by using profanities generally taboo on BBC2 in "Death in Royston Vasey"; Lesbian parole officer Pauline (Pemberton) takes hostages, and dull-witted Mike (Shearsmith) tries to cover up a murder by blaming the local wolves in "Anarchy in Royston Vasey"; and in the season finale "Royston Vasey and the Monster From Hell," the community is besieged by a nosebleed epidemic and the Legz Akimbo Theater Company lays a large and noxious egg. In addition to the six regular episodes, season two of The League of Gentleman offers a Christmas special -- but don't expect anything resembling peace on earth or goodwill to men! Also, a concert special, "The League of Gentleman Live at Drury Lane," was seen approximately one year after the final second-season offering. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

An outgrowth of the BBC radio series On the Town, the savagely satirical British TV sitcom The League of Gentlemen showcased the comedy troupe of the same name. Having honed their laugh-making skills during a lengthy stint at London's Canal Café, the troupe's three members -- Mark Gatiss, Steve Pemberton, and Reece Shearsmith -- gained nationwide fame by virtue of their award-winning gigs at the Edinburgh Festival. Doubling, tripling, and sometimes quadrupling in roles, Gatiss, Pemberton, and Shearsmith played virtually all of the rather peculiar residents of the cloistered (and implicitly inbred) community of Royston Vasey. Characters included a pair of misanthropic shop owners, an inept and inadvertently homicidal veterinarian, a demented butcher, a blind photographer, a transsexual cab driver, a gypsy who went around kidnapping new brides, a lesbian parole officer, a family of fanatical neat freaks, a radical but ineffective female vicar, a certain "Professor Erno Breastpinch'd," and various and sundry addlepated relatives and tourists. Murder, bestiality, cannibalism, sexual perversion, mental deficiency, and other such social ills were the order of the day in Royston Valley -- but after all, who are we to make value judgments, since everybody on the show seemed to be having such a good time? The three stars also wrote the scripts, in concert with Jeremy Dyson. Making its BBC2 television debut on January 11, 1999, The League of Gentlemen yielded three six-episode seasons and two specials, ending its run on October 24, 2002. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide