Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace: How The Cult Comedy Is Still Going Strong 20 Years Later

Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace, like the fictional show-within-a-show that it’s centred around, is a cult classic that has enjoyed a bit of a resurgence in recent years. The show, a surreal, retro parody of the horror genre, aired back in January and February of 2004. Airing over six episodes on Channel 4, it helped to kick-start the careers of several of its leads, most notably Richard Ayoade and Matt Berry, but remained a relatively obscure, lesser known piece of British comedy in the period following its release.

However, twenty years on, the show has shown itself to still be going strong, with two books having recently been released; penned, we’re told, by the show’s eponymous fictional horror writer and ‘dreamweaver,’ Garth Marenghi, while actor Matthew Holness has been touring the country, performing read throughs of the texts in character.

I went to one of these performances, in Manchester, when the first book, Garth Marenghi’s TerrorTome, was released back in 2021. One thing that struck me was that the majority of the audience appeared to be around my age – that is, students, and people in their twenties, rather than those you’d imagine were the original audience for it back in 2004. Two decades on, it’s a show that seems to have only grown in popularity, as this weird, offbeat, late-night comedy show has gone on to attract a large cult following online.

This perhaps shouldn’t be surprising. It’s a show which feels perfectly suited to internet culture and to an existence online, as well as a natural favourite for fans of wider cult and genre TV. A pastiche of horror and sci-fi, it shares much of the knowing, irreverent approach to the genre it’s riffing off of that more modern shows like Rick And Morty have run with in years since. It has nevertheless remained a relative unknown, and has its own unique, demented energy to it that makes it well worth revisiting now that it turns twenty.

The central conceit of Darkplace is a simple one. A faux-horror show that was presented as being a lost relic from the eighties (previously airing, we’re told, only in Peru, and banned elsewhere due to its “radicality”), it’s set in a hospital that also acts as the gateway to another dimension. As a result, its central characters find themselves facing off against a range of paranormal threats that include, at various points, an animated filing cabinet, or an extraterrestrial broccoli mist, all while also dealing with the burden of day to day admin.

The show acts as a brilliant parody for so many older cult classics; from old science-fiction shows made during the seventies and eighties, to B-Movie shlock and the ‘so bad it’s good’ school of films, such as The Room or Plan 9 From Outer Space, that we’ve all seen posted, parodied, and memed endlessly online.

It’s clear that creators Matthew Holness and Richard Ayoade must have seen their fair share of this kind of stuff when they wrote Darkplace, as the show relentlessly mocks and plays up the cheapness and the absurdity found throughout these forms of media, as characters find themselves, at different points, facing attacks from objects that are clearly held up on wires, or having the dramatic chase scene at the climax of one episode be on bikes, in front of what’s clearly a backdrop going through an obstacle course in a forest.

The introductory sequences to each episode set the tone for the show perfectly, as they open with the character of Garth, played by Holness, reading from one of his many spine chillers – he proudly boasts in one episode that he’s one of the few people out there to have written more books than they’ve read. It then cuts to what we’re told is an episode from his old show from the eighties, now being broadcast alongside commentary from himself and others on the production team. Each episode proper then opens, in spectacularly melodramatic fashion, with Marenghi’s character, Dr Rick Dagless MD, running from an exploding ambulance, a baby in his arms. Cue a freeze frame, retro title card, and the incredibly over the top, eighties-style synth soundtrack.

Parodying a particular era or genre was, of course,something that had been done countless times, from the likes of Young Frankenstein to Team America: World Police. It can no doubt be a tricky act to pull off, to make something seem purposefully outdated or cheap, and it’s rarely been done quite so well as it is here, as the show frequently gets some of its biggest laughs from the purposefully bad edits and dialogue.

The show goes all out in giving everything the look and feel of low budget 80s TV – to the point where it actually became highly expensive to make due to its use of genuine film cameras and equipment from the period. The whole thing feels incredibly authentic, from the use of the original 80s Channel 4 logo, to the woefully unconvincing props, the badly overdubbed dialogue, and the synth score – which incorporates homages to the likes of Halloween and Twin Peaks, as well as a truly unforgettable moment of rapping from Ayoade.

In addition to its shoddy special effects, Darkplace is full of moments of deliberately poor continuity, as well as heavy use of slow-motion (one character asserts that episodes were running 8 minutes short without this), inserting frequent cuts and edits in which a character will look directly at the camera, and purposefully wooden acting choices.

The cast here are all brilliant, the performances working on multiple different levels as we cut between the characters playing their roles terribly in the 80s footage, to their ‘real’ selves looking back on their experiences during the commentary sequences – scenes which feel very reminiscent of all kinds of similar documentaries and reconstructions that tended to accompany the DVD releases for older episodes of Doctor Who and similar shows.

It takes genuine acting talent to pretend to act this badly, while having it still seem natural. Ayoade in particular is masterful here, as producer Dean Learner, who, we are told, had never acted before prior to playing hospital boss Thornton Reed.

Ayoade has of course made a whole career out of playing characters who are impossibly awkward and sardonic, and there’s some of that in here in the scenes where he’s in character as Reed, where’s he’s repeatedly messing up on every cue and delivering every line in the most unnatural, stilted way. But then the show has him metamorphose into Garth’s seedy and low-brow producer, where he comes off as incredibly cavalier and, in his interactions with women, as well as one instance in which he’s said to have punched a child, downright creepy.

Pretty much everyone is perfectly cast here. Given the entire tone of the show, one watching at the time might well have expected that then newcomer Matt Berry was putting on a voice in his scenes as the well-spoken and over the top actor Todd Rivers. It was likely only after he’d appeared in other material afterwards when it became clear – no, that’s just his voice. Alice Lowe is an actress whose praises aren’t sung enough, and she’s consistently great here as someone who, in some brilliant satire of old TV’s dodgy gender politics, is constantly in complete distress or being utterly trodden upon by the men around her.

But it’s Garth himself who makes the show, and it’s a mystery how Holness hasn’t shown up in more since. The character originated in stand-up performances devised by Holness and Ayoade for Edinburgh Fringe, and it perfectly sends up the utter narcissism and self-importance of so many neckbeard horror writers, and other self-proclaimed creative geniuses. Everything from the laughably bad titles and extracts from his novels, to the utter mundanity of his writing, and the way in which his ego seeds its way into his dialogue and characters, all works so well. One line – “I know writers who use subtext and they’re all cowards” – effectively sums him up.

Even besides the purposefully hokey lines found in the 80s extracts, some of the dialogue here is unmatched, especially in the scenes where characters are just talking as themselves. It’s these commentary scenes that really help to raise this show above the realm of pure pastiche, adding a layer to the comedy that wouldn’t be there otherwise, and deftly avoiding any jokes feeling overdone. Much of the humour bears a lot of similarities to the style of Zucker and Zucker, in films like Airplane or the Naked Gun trilogy, in how it utilises everything, from set dressings, to props, in order to just throw in gag after gag.

With shows like Jam, The Office and The League of Gentlemen, the early noughties were an exceptional period for UK comedy. Far more than before, when most comedies, even the most radical, had often stuck to tried and tested formats, this was a period which seemed to see a real sense of innovation, and a bending of old formulas. A new generation of comedians and filmmakers, including the likes of Chris Morris, Ricky Gervais, and Ed Wright, took things in a direction that was increasingly meta, and surreal.

Twenty years on, Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace stands apart as perhaps the best, most stand out example of these. Ironically, given its retro feel, it feels like one of the least dated of these kinds of shows, as well as paving the way for much else that came after. Shows such as The Mighty Boosh, which came out the same year, clearly carries across much of the same sense of humour, and indeed, many of the same cast members.

It’s a show that remains mostly unknown, but more than any other such comedies from that time, it does seem to still be one that’s being chanced upon by new viewers, and which continues to build up a loyal following. It stands above and beyond most examples of the parody genre that are out there, which can all too often feel a bit one-note, with even classics of the genre, such as Naked Gun, often feeling like they’re just banging the same drum.

Darkplace is definitely banging a particular drum, but also has enough variety in its short run, as well as being so out there, that it never really feels like its jokes have become played out. For those who are fans of British and surrealist comedy, it remains quite unlike anything else that’s out there, and is well worth discovering today.

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