Various Artists - The League of Gentlemen: Christmas Special (DVD)

It's Christmas time in Royston Vasey, the little northern town whose proud motto is 'You'll Never Leave', and this special full-length episode has a darkly Dickensian yuletide flavour. We are presented with a complex tableau of stories delivered to Royston Vasey's vicar Bernice by a variety of strangers who visit her church. In flashback we are shown the terrible secret behind Dr Chinnery's always fatal attempts at veteninary surgery. Back in the present, and taking a sideswipe at Stanley Kubrick's 'Eyes Wide Shut', the endlessly warring couple Stella and Charlie try to resolve their dysfunction, and Stella visits a strange masked group called 'Solutions' in the hope of using voodoo to get rid of her husband. Finally we travel back to visit a younger Herr Lipp, the vicious pederast, who is captured here leading a choir of small boys in the small German town of Duisberg; but what will he do to the young lad who asks if he may come to visit this Christmas?