Hitchcock gives Psychoville enough Rope to….
This is just too good to not write about. If you’re in London on 23 April, I’m begging you. Please go and report back!
From the twisted, but brilliant, minds of the creators of The League of Gentlemen comes an equally twisted black comedy, Psychoville. That’s not the story here. Reece Shearsmith and Steve Pemberton have outdone themselves 
by creating a place more demented than Royston Vasey. The premise is simple. An odd assortment of characters from across the UK, receive a mysterious letter with a simple phrase, “I know what you did“. Imagine a serial-killer obsessed man-child, a one-handed children’s entertainer, a blind millionaire who collects stuffed toy animals, a midwife who treats her practice doll as a real child and a telekinetic little person in love with Snow White. The messages continue from the mysterious Black Gloved Man linking all the characters together in a way that is not immediately familiar to them. That’s the premise, but, again, that’s not the story here.
Not sure Hitchcock had this in mind, but I’ll bet he’d approve
Here’s the deal. Episode 4 of the first season of the series was shot in almost one continuous take (two, actually) paying 
tribute to Hitchcock’s 1948 classic masterpiece, Rope. Equally as great, this episode has League co-creator, Mark Gatiss in a guest-starring role of the Jimmy Stewart character in Rope. As reported by our friends at the British Comedy Guide, Pemberton and Shearsmith will be present at a special screening of both the Hitchcock film and the Psychoville episode on Friday, April 23, at the Phoenix Cinema in North London. Afterwards, they’ll participate in a Q&A session about how, and why, they created the episode.
If you can’t be there, Reece Shearsmith and Steve Pemberton explain a bit of the difficulties they faced during taping. Yet another reason British comedy is superior to their American counterparts.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r0mwK9Xoa1k&feature=player_embedded
