The League of Gentlemen’s Apocalypse

Jeremy Dyson proposes a bold new TV series in which everyone in Royston Vasey wakes up with a tail. The idea excites the writers, but a confrontation with Papa Lazarou, Edward, and Tubbs quickly turns sour. The clash ends badly when the creator attempts to escape and plunges off a cliff.

The action moves to a church where vicar Bernice Woodall warns Pauline Campbell-Jones and Mr. Chinnery that signs of The Apocalypse are appearing. The warning sets a mood of looming disaster and frames the surreal events to come.

Hilary Briss escapes prison, holds Herr Lipp hostage, and forces him to hijack a car driven by Geoff Tipps. The escape pulls Briss and his companions into a wider, more perilous path, propelling them toward Hadfield.

Briss, Lipp, and Tipps pass through a door in the church crypt and find themselves in Hadfield, the real town Royston Vasey represents. The journey blurs fiction and reality as both newcomers and old allies gather to face the looming doom.

In London, Lipp masquerades as his own creator and visits Steve Pemberton's home, only to discover that Pemberton has neglected his family. The encounter deepens the meta-narrative and foreshadows the writers' vulnerabilities.

Briss and Tipps discuss The League of Gentlemen's new project, a historical horror called The King's Evil, while Briss relentlessly pursues the escapee Pemberton to reclaim him. The ambition of their project intersects with Briss's personal pursuit, intensifying the metafictional tension.

Back at their hideout, Briss discovers Tipps has woven himself into The King's Evil as its hero, and Lipp becomes disturbingly attached to Pemberton's family, rifling through his notes. The boundaries between writer and character blur further as loyalties fracture.

Briss escorts Pemberton back to Hadfield, and a tense phone call to Reece Shearsmith is misread as a prank. Shearsmith and Gatiss soon identify the ruse, capturing Herr Lipp and moving to intervene.

Shearsmith and Gatiss travel to Hadfield, capture Lipp, and return to Royston Vasey through a dimensional door, swapping hostages with Briss and Tipps. The plan begins to fracture as reality and fiction collide and control slips away.

A stray gunshot during the exchange kills Pemberton, sending the plan into chaos. Dr Erasmus Pea manipulates events, luring Briss away and turning others into a gigantic homunculus as the town spirals toward catastrophe.

Pea stimulates the creation of a gigantic homunculus. Briss fights the monstrous construct while Shearsmith and Gatiss climb church walls to escape; tragically, Shearsmith falls to his death.

Briss mortally wounds the homunculus, but Pea fatally wounds him from behind. Tipps battles Pea using a portion of the homunculus to even the odds; Lipp threatens Gatiss, who is killed by a stray shot as the plan collapses. The apocalypse seems to be contained only to reveal a new free-will Royston Vasey.

With the writers dead, Royston Vasey seems to continue on its own terms and the Apocalypse is averted. The town gains true free will: Lipp adopts orphaned children, Chinnery finds a rabbit to care for, and Bernice and Pauline grow closer. Tipps leaves the church, bidding farewell to Edward, Tubbs, and Papa Lazarou. In a mid-credits scene, Dyson is alive but in a coma, and the world finally discovers that tails have appeared.