Garth Marenghi's Darkplace

Ever since I watched What We Do In The Shadows, I realized there's a whole rabbit hole of British comedies with a lot of the same actors and directors, people like Richard Ayoade, Jemaine Clement and Matt Berry. Obviously, the IT Crowd would be an easy first choice but then Graham Linehan happened, so I thought I'd settle for the next best thing: The brilliantly meta Garth Marenghi's Darkplace.

Garth Marenghi's Darkplace is a short-lived horror show from the 80s made by the titular author. It's about a "brilliant yet troubled" doctor named Rick Dagless, played by Marenghi, who works at a weird hospital where a bunch of weird shit happens every episode. It's not very good. It feels very cheap, the acting is awful, and the writing is hamfisted. It's 80s excess at its very worst... is what I would be saying if this was at all a real show. See, Garth Marenghi's Darkplace is actually a fictional show, and Marenghi himself isn't actually a real person. It's a bit tricky to wrap your head around at first, but Darkplace is a parody of cheap 80s horror shows that's purposefully made to be as cheesy and ineptly made as possible. To sweeten the deal, we even get commentary and interviews with the fictional cast and crew responsible for the in-universe version of the show, interspersed throughout each episode. I've said countless times that I love episodes and TV shows about film, so having an entire show use this meta premise of a fictional DVD special of a fictional bad 80s TV show is right up my alley. On its own, the fictional Darkplace show would be a funny comedy, but the show-in-a-show approach allows for way more jabs at filmmaking and storytelling processes that hold up especially well. 

But what really makes Darkplace (the real show) great is all of the effort that went into selling that cheesy 80s feel. The acting is obviously the highlight here. It's really hard to purposefully act badly, but the cast does it so convincingly that it's easy to think they're actually bad at acting, from Matthew Holness's Shatner-esque overreactions to Richard Ayoade's wooden line deliveries to Matt Berry's weird vocalizations. But it's even more impressive to keep in mind that the cast also has to act normally for the commentary sections. The writing is also fantastic, between the perfectly clunky dialogue in the 80s show and the aforementioned meta interview sections, but what's also clever is how the series works as a  character study of Marenghi. The way he shills for his own work in the writing, the way he never gives his character any flaws while pretending he did, the ridiculous amount of sexism, it's like you can learn everything about the guy just by watching the series. And of course, I can't go without talking about the production. From the synthy score, to the hilariously shoddy effects, to the uneven sound mixing, to the choppy editing, to the liberal usage of speed-up and slow-motion, Darkplace really feels like a cheap 80s show. There are so many filming mistakes and intentional oversights both obvious and subtle that I feel like I can watch Darkplace a whole bunch of times and find dozens of new errors every single time.

Episode Ranking:

1. Hell Hath Fury (Episode 2)
2. The Creeping Moss From The Shores Of Shuggoth (Episode 6)
3. The Apes Of Wrath (Episode 4)
4. Once Upon A Beginning (Episode 1)
5. Skipper The Eyechild (Episode 3)
6. Scotch Mist (Episode 5)

Overall, Garth Marenghi's Darkplace is an absolute gem of a show, with a brilliant meta premise, fantastic acting, a massive jokes-per-minute ratio, and incredibly thoughtful production that nails the cheesy 80s horror aesthetic perfectly. I really don't have any complaints here, even the short length makes it feel all the more like a long-lost cult classic. I haven't seen too many British comedies, but out of the ones I have seen, Darkplace is now up there with Spaced as my favorite of the bunch.

5/5 Stars