THE League of Gentlemen's Apocalypse suffers from what I call Oasis syndrome. That band released a debut album of songs subsumed by their influences, their dreams and a youthful arrogance.

It brought them fame, riches and famous girlfriends. Unfortunately that was all they had to sing about in the follow-up.

The League's members, having created the town of Royston Vasey and its grotesque denizens, and having become famous names themselves, have chosen to move up to the big screen with the tale of how difficult it is to make a film.

If this was not self-centred enough, the plot requires that a good 80 per cent of the Royston Vasey cast are jettisoned and the three writers (the fourth, Jeremy Dyson, who never appears on screen is played by his actor lookalike Michael Sheen) mostly play themselves three well off but rather dull media types.

The plot has Royston Vasey in the throes of apocalyptic storms brought on by the fading prospect of a new series and some of the characters manage, through a portal in the church, to escape to London with the aim of securing more scripts from the writers.

Apart from a few character cameos at the start of the film, only three Royston Vasey characters have much screen time, dodgy butcher Hilary Briss, comic German Herr Lipp and the blunt Geoff Tipps.

One of the jokes surrounds the three writers dismissing Lipp as a one-joke character who should be dropped.

The film script however has Lipp as the main Vasey character and litters the script with his double entendres.

There are still plenty of funny moments but the central conceit is so self-reverential that it can spoil your enjoyment of the rest.

The team appear local heroes who are lost when they try to open up their ideas.

Aaron Bateman