Reece Shearsmith Movies

A criminal scheme gone wrong is just the start of a string of life-threatening bad luck in this darkly comic thriller. David (Andy Serkis) and Peter (Reece Shearsmith) are a pair of second-rate criminals who are eager to make a big score and think they've come up with the formula for a perfect crime. David works for a wealthy local businessman named Arnie who dotes on his teenaged stepdaughter Tracey (Jennifer Ellison), and so with the help of Arnie's slacker son Andrew (Steven O'Donnell), he and Peter kidnap the girl and demand a hefty ransom for her safe return. But Tracey puts up far more of a fight than David and Peter ever expected, and when Andrew picks up the ransom only to discover they've been given a decoy instead of cash, the would-be kidnappers have no clue what to do next. But this problem seems like small potatoes when the owner of the seemingly abandoned cottage where they're holed up unexpectedly returns -- he turns out to be a hideously deformed lunatic with a murderous temper and a bitter hatred of trespassers. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

Three residents of a 1950s-era U.K. town experience apocalyptic events that transport them 50 years into the future, where they encounter a trio of time travelers who inform them that their entire lives were a work of fiction created by a popular comedy troupe called The League of Gentlemen. Saucy German Herr Lipp (Steve Pemberton), psychotic butcher Hilary Briss (Mark Gatiss), and unassuming businessman Geoff Tipps (Reece Shearsmith) were fleeing fireballs in fictional Royston Vasey when they ran into a church crypt, and emerged a half-century later in the real town of Hadfield. Later, as the hapless time travelers struggle to get their bearings, they encounter posh zookeeper Edward (Shearsmith), mysterious Tubbs (Pemberton), and imposing voodoo chief Papa Lazarou (Shearsmith) - who shock them with the news that they and their hometown are, in fact, entirely fictional. ~ Jason Buchanan, Rovi

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, Rovi

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, Rovi