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Empathy was always The League of Gentlemen’s most notable attribution, the characters were written with humanity, and a humility, that set them apart from other sketch shows at the time. A clear example of this is Pauline Campbell-Jones, beginning as a seemingly two dimensional villain, and somehow becoming one of the shows most beloved and defended characters.
Pauline is introduced as a cruel restart officer, inexplicably obsessed with pens, and with a seething distain for the unemployed; referring to them as “dole scum”, chastising them and even going as far as to physically assault one member of her restart course, Ross Gaines. Like most sketch characters, for her first couple of appearances her general disposition remains nearly identical to her introductory sketch, however, in her third appearance, there’s a noticeable shift in the way she’s being portrayed.
During a practice interview exercise with the aforementioned Ross, he pressures her to answer questions about herself, in which she reveals she has no qualifications, all her family are deceased, and her only friends are her pens. She tells him her work is “everything” to her, and when asked her thoughts on love she quietly replies with “there was somebody once...”, then is cut off by Ross, before she can elaborate. By the end of the interview, Ross bluntly announces she hasn’t got the job, telling her he thinks she’s a bully, not qualified, and emphasising that she’s “too old”. Already appearing worn down by the interaction, Pauline seemingly snaps, smacking Ross with her clipboard, and shoving balled up paper into his mouth, berating him as he cries out in pain, until she’s stopped by another member of the course, Mickey.
The next time Pauline is seen, she announces they’ve reached the end of their restart course and is met with disinterest from the group; apart from Mickey, who brings her a present, a pen on a string. She expresses confusion towards the gift and Mickey informs her it’s to be worn around her neck, he helps her put it on and hugs her. Pauline appears utterly perplexed by the gesture, standing frozen and speechless for a moment, eventually saying “Thank you, Mickey, I shall treasure this.”
Disrupting the emotional moment, Ross asks to have a word with her in private, to which she tells him to just “spit it out”. Ross informs Pauline he works for social security, he’s been assessing her working practices, and as of 4pm she will be suspended, pending further investigation. Initially, she doesn’t believe him, until he shows her some of the evidence he’s been collecting over the course of the restart. He tells her she’s no longer employed there and therefore the pens are no longer her property, to which she pleads with him to “leave [her] [her] pens.”
In the struggle, the pens are spilled onto the floor, Pauline kneels down to collect them and Ross informs the rest of the members of the restart that the course is over and they’re dismissed. Ross leaves the room, followed by everyone else, the last person to leave is Mickey, who hands Pauline a pen and solemnly walks away from her. The scene ends with Pauline on her knees, sobbing into the pens on the floor.
By season 2, Pauline has lost everything, she’s still unemployed and utterly miserable, she meets with Ross and begs for her old job back, which he coldly denies her, and walks out of his office, once again leaving her alone and unstable. As Ross enters the restart room, he’s attacked by Pauline from behind. With help from Mickey, she ties him to a chair and holds him hostage in hopes of negotiating his release in exchange for getting reinstated in her job. After several days, Ross escapes and Pauline is arrested.
After Pauline is released from prison, she struggles to find a job and ends up being employed by Ross to spy on Mickey, whom Ross is convinced is committing fraud. Eventually, Mickey proposes to Pauline, so she decides to end her arrangement with Ross and commit to her relationship with Mickey, even with the knowledge she will never get her job back by choosing him. Her final scene is her wedding to Mickey, where for the first time in the show, she looks genuinely happy. Ross stands and the back of the church, not to cause a scene, or ruin her day, but to quietly clap with an undeniable smile, he’s proud of her for allowing herself to find something more important than her work; and her pens.
Pauline’s conclusion isn’t just a cheap happy ending for the sake of it, it’s a culmination of three seasons of narrative and character development. Above all, Pauline’s ending feels deserved, her evolution, from a lonely, malicious woman, to someone finally choosing to be happy, is poignant. It’s a story that contains both the dark comedy the show is known for, but also a powerful pathos which compels the audience to connect with the human behind the wig; it’s no mystery why Pauline is still one of the shows most popular characters.
15 Years after the show ended in 2002, three anniversary specials were announced, and, of course, Pauline was front and centre of the marketing. For both fans who watched the original series as it aired and a new generation of devotees, this was an exciting opportunity to see where the characters lives have taken them, and where they are now. Which is, for the most part, what the anniversary specials turned out to be, yet, when Pauline is reintroduced, it’s at the beginning of another restart course.
Pauline enters a room lined with employment themed posters, not unlike her original restart room, only much brighter and less bleak. Sitting at a desk front and centre, is her husband Mickey, and beside him sits Ross, only she doesn’t seem to recognise them, even asking Mickey to introduce himself. The scene plays out nearly identically to her introductory sketch, from 18 years ago, except everyone seems to have a pitiful forlornness to the way they respond to her.
She hands Mickey a box labelled “Pauline’s pens”, telling him to hand them out, and leaves the room, Mickey opens the box revealing it to be empty, he mimes taking out a pen and hands the box to Ross. Ross pleads with Mickey to not make him relive this, telling him it was a horrible time in all of their lives, to which Mickey responds with “I liked it.” A man sitting at the back of the room implores Ross to keep playing along, Mickey refers to him as a doctor, and it’s revealed Pauline has been diagnosed with a form of dementia, and this is all a part of a treatment plan called “reminiscence therapy”.
Pauline is delicately ushered back into the room by a nurse, upon re-entering she stands frozen and confused, she begins repeating lines she’s already said, and even forgets her own name. The doctor tells Ross to provoke Pauline as it could trigger her memory, the scene ends with Ross once again being attacked by Pauline, and Mickey delightedly shouting “She’s back!” But she isn’t back, and she won’t ever be “back”, she would have continued to lose her memory and become a shell of the woman she was.
The decision to diagnose a character with dementia isn’t inherently bad, especially since the writers have proven themselves to be able to handle serious subject matter with the maturity and sensitivity it deserves. The problem arises with the choice of character, it’s unnecessary to see Pauline any more alone or stripped of her identity, than she ever was in the original series, as she was already a person with so little; she clung to her job, and her pens, because they’re all she had.
Pauline’s wedding was one of the shows most moving scenes, with a message that ran much deeper than the surface; people can change. People, however hurt or damaged, are capable of outgrowing their former selves and beginning a new life. However, this has now been retroactively taken away from her, all of her growth and development has become obsolete, reverting her to the violent, unstable woman she was before.
Still, Pauline’s merciless treatment in the anniversary specials doesn’t end there; another plotline sees the character Geoff Tipps being asked by an old friend, Mike Harris, to kill his wife, Cheryl. In a farcical turn of events, Geoff ends up breaking into the wrong house and smothering the wrong woman. Mickey returns home and discovers Pauline’s corpse with a heartbreaking shriek.
It’s rare for sketch characters to break out of the repetitious cycle of their joke; “a restart officer who hates the unemployed” could have easily defined Pauline forever. But she, like several other League characters, was able to become more than just what originally made her funny. For three seasons, the audience saw Pauline find her identity, and in doing so, find happiness. Only for her to lose her memory and then to be killed in a trivial misunderstanding, a devastating decision, which the term “character assassination” doesn’t begin to cover; it literally couldn’t be any less dignified.
It would be a lot more provoking to give this plotline to a character the audience has never seen vulnerable, someone the audience has only ever really seen one side of; a character like Pop.
Pop is established as a sentimental newsagent, of ambiguous nationality, with a significant violent streak and hair-trigger temper. He has two sons, Al and Richie, who manage their own stall, given to them by Pop. In Pop’s first appearance Richie struggles to break the news to him that their stall was robbed under his supervision, where just 9 chocolate bars were stolen. Pop immediately responds with ferocious brutality towards Richie, taking off his belt and whipping the floor in front of him, causing him to cower, hiding his weeping face from Pop, while Al attempts to calm Pop down. The scene ends with Pop renouncing Richie as his son forever, in an extended version of the scene, after Pop and Al leave Richie alone, he reaches into his bag and pulls out the chocolate bars stolen from the stall, throwing them onto the floor, revealing the stunt to be an act of self-sabotage, setting himself free from the overbearing terror and intensity of his Pop.
When Pop is reintroduced in the anniversary specials he shows up at Al’s family home, Al is now married and has two teenage daughters, whom Pop has never met, insinuating he’s been out of Al’s life for quite some time. Pop tells Al he was recently released from prison, and he wants Al to tell him where Richie is, Al refuses, until Pop implies he might stay in Al’s life indefinitely. Out of wanting to protect his wife and daughters, Al regrettably gives Pop Richie’s location, sending Richie a text that simply read “I’m sorry.”
Pop arrives at the deli Richie now owns, he corners a terrified Richie alone in the shop and turns the sign on the door around to read “closed”. What happens next in the scene doesn’t bear repeating, it’s a graphic assault that far exceeds the brutality of any other scene in the show. The scene ends with Richie repeatedly stabbing Pop in the chest, he looks up and sees Al and his wife standing by the door, and together, they silently agree to dispose of him.
The character of Pop isn’t nearly as beloved, and certainly not as defended, as Pauline, although the characters have a lot more in common than is initially obvious; they’re both incredibly violent, erratic, unpredictable people, who take their job far too seriously. The substantial differences between them begin to arise with the way they develop, Pauline, as established, changed tremendously over the course of her time on the show, while Pop never really developed at all.
The audience is shown why Pauline is the way she is, and is given reason enough to empathise with her, seeing her vulnerable, hopeless, even at times, kind. Pop’s story never gives any inclination as to how he became the way he is, an intensely volatile bigot, caring more about his newsagents than his own sons.
If it was instead Pop who lost his memory, his story could begin exactly as it did in the specials; turning up unannounced at Al’s home, not having been released from prison, but with the news of his dementia diagnosis, he would be looking for Richie not out of seeking revenge, but reconciliation; knowing he doesn’t have long left with his memories. This change could, for the first time, show Pop in a new light; vulnerable, afraid of losing himself, and desperate to reconnect with his estranged son before it’s too late.
If the audience was given an opportunity to see Pop attempting to make things right between himself and Richie, it could begin to compensate for the character development Pop never had in the original series; not excusing his past behaviour, but adding a depth to his character that he had previously been denied.
The League will always be considered a dark comedy, filled with grotesque caricatures and ludicrous plotlines, but to overlook the humanity within the show’s inhabitants is to do it a disservice. Nevertheless, not all characters are created equal, and they all serve a different purpose within the machine. Pauline lived and died as the heart of the show, whereas Pop concluded as a gangrenous appendage needing to be severed. Perhaps that’s where a character like Pop was headed all along.