Garth Marenghi's Darkplace

Garth Marenghi's Darkplace
Front cover of DVD release
Created by	Matthew Holness Richard Ayoade
Starring	Matthew Holness Richard Ayoade Matt Berry Alice Lowe
Country of origin	United Kingdom
No. of episodes	6 (List of episodes)
Production
Running time	25 minutes approx.
Original release
Network	Channel 4
Release	29 January 2004 – 4 March 2004

Garth Marenghi's Darkplace is a comedy series made for Channel 4. Created by Matthew Holness and Richard Ayoade, it is a parody of the horror genre and revolves around the character of Garth Marenghi himself, a writer of pulp fiction played by Matthew Holness.

Show synopsis

The premise of the series is that in the mid-1980s, Garth Marenghi and his publisher Dean Learner made their own TV series on a shoestring budget. Set in Darkplace Hospital in Romford, East London Garth Marenghi's Darkplace tells of the adventures of Dr. Rick Dagless, MD, as he fights the forces of darkness while simultaneously coping with the pressures of running a modern hospital.

In reality the series is a deliberate send-up both of the horror genre and of 1980s TV production. Action series such as Blake's 7, Doctor Who, The A-Team, The Sweeney, cult drama Twin Peaks and various American medical dramas are also obvious influences, and the comedy relies partly on familiarity with such programmes. More obscurely, Darkplace makes reference to Lars von Trier's "haunted hospital" TV series The Kingdom (Riget in Danish), which was later remade by Stephen King for an American audience as Kingdom Hospital. Much of the show could be taken as a parody of King's work (with the flying staplers and other deadly inanimate objects of Hell Hath Fury, for example, being a fairly direct parody of King's Maximum Overdrive and similar works).

The episodes themselves are given added authenticity by the title sequence being preceded by Channel 4's original Blocks ident.

Each episode of Darkplace includes interview sections set in the present-day, in which Marenghi and his co-stars comment on the show-within-the-show, which provides an extra layer of character comedy. These commentaries are always performed by Marenghi himself, Learner (In Hell Hath Fury, Marenghi introduces Learner as one of the few involved with the production who hasn't "died, or offended me.") and Todd Rivers.

The show's music soundtrack parodies the same subjects as the writing of Darkplace, and gained its composer Andrew Hewitt a BAFTA Nomination as Best New Composer for Film and TV (2004).

The show is currently being broadcast in the USA on Cartoon Network's Adult swim, and webcast on Adult Swim Video.

Characters

File:Darkplacecast.jpg

The cast of Darkplace, from left to right: Todd Rivers/Dr. Lucien Sanchez, Dean Learner/Thornton Reed, Garth Marenghi/Dr. Rick Dagless and Madeleine Wool/Dr. Liz Asher.

• Matthew Holness as Garth Marenghi (an anagram of Argh Nightmare) who plays Dr. Rick Dagless, MD: Dag is a Vietnam and Falklands veteran and former warlock. He also keeps a Magnum revolver on him at all times.
• Richard Ayoade as Dean Learner, Garth's publisher, who (utterly incompetently) plays Thornton Reed: A camp hospital administrator who bears a trademark shotgun and answers to Hospital boss "Won Ton". He also has a habit of upstaging Garth.
• Matt Berry as Todd Rivers, an actor who plays Dr. Lucien Sanchez: Improbably handsome with the disconcerting habit of losing lip-synch, with coiffured hair, and a voice an octave lower than it should be. He generally uses an automatic pistol (with a backup in a leg holster in case his original turns on him)
• Alice Lowe as Madeleine Wool, an actress who plays Dr. Liz Asher: stereotypical fluffy blonde with occasional psychic powers (sometimes brought on by PMS). Madeleine Wool has disappeared since the making of the programme.

A few other (real) actors have recurring roles in the show-within-the-show: Kim Noble appears in every episode as Jim, a hospital worker whose main function is simply to listen to Dagless reel off a lengthy speech and respond with a "yes" or other monosyllabic reply, and Noble's real-life comedy partner Stuart Silver appears as "The Extra": a character whose name is unknown and has been a Doctor, a Receptionist, a Keyboard soloist and a Barman. Julian Barratt also appears in three episodes as the hospital's padre.

Graham Linehan and Stephen Merchant appear twice as the hospital porter and chef respectively. Noel Fielding also appears as the Apeloid in Episode 4, The Apes of Wrath.

Concept

Many of the show's jokes rely on the viewer recognising that the script reflects the views of the Garth Marenghi character, for example the characterisation of Dr. Asher as a frail woman liable to burst into tears at the slightest provocation, or the bizarre portrayal of the Scottish people in "Scotch Mist". More jokes come from the fact that the script is a way for Marenghi to flex his own ego and that Dagless is a clear Mary Sue, as evidenced when Dr. Lucien Sanchez wishes he was "more attractive, like Dagless," and when the hospital Padre says "You [Dagless] are the most sensitive man I know. And I know God," both in Episode 6, "The Creeping Moss from the Shores of Shuggoth". Deliberate continuity errors, sloppy stagecraft/editing and bad acting (especially on the part of Learner) are also constant comedic themes.

Episodes

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Dean & Garth

This list is ordered by the original air dates on Channel 4 in the United Kingdom.

Series One (2004)

#	Title	Description	Original air date
1.1	Once Upon A Beginning	New doctor Liz Asher arrives at Darkplace Hospital, where a mysterious cat portends disaster. Can Dr. Rick Dagless, M. D., act in time to prevent all sorts of unspeakable evilness leaking out from the standard-sized hellmouth under Darkplace Hospital itself? It's not going to be much of a series if he does in one episode.	January 29, 2004
1.2	Hell Hath Fury	At Darkplace Hospital, lunch is delayed and objects begin flying about the place and generally moving quite a bit more than they would usually do. At first suspicion falls on the hospital's temporary clerical assistant, but Dr Rick Dagless M.D. is determined to find out the truth, even if it kills him - which it won't.	February 5, 2004
1.3	Skipper the Eye Child	Somewhere on the wards of Darkplace Hospital, a man gives birth to a giant eyeball which brings out paternalistic instincts in Dr. Rick Dagless, M. D., still grieving for the loss of his half-human, half-grasshopper son. But could the eyeball be a potential killer? Well, what do you think? Duh!	February 12, 2004
1.4	The Apes of Wrath	A mysterious illness spreads like a particularly virulent disease through the wards of Darkplace, causing doctors and patients to revert to a primal state. It's up to Dr. Rick Dagless, M. D., to stop it before he too turns into a chimpanzee or an orang-utan or something like that.	February 19, 2004
1.5	Scotch Mist	A mist descends on Darkplace - and it's Scottish and/or Scotch. Dr Rick Dagless, M. D. had better do something really good about it, or else all the hospital's resident sassenachs are in grave danger. Probably.	February 26, 2004
1.6	The Creeping Moss from the Shores of Shuggoth	Dr. Sanchez's life is in danger from a patient with a fairly bad cosmic broccoli infection. It's down to Dr. Rick Dagless, M. D., to save his buddy - and the world. Or if all else fails, come up with a delicious way of using excess broccoli. It won't come to that, though.	March 4, 2004

Reaction

Darkplace originally aired in 2004 and, although popular with those who saw it, viewing figures were fairly poor, which is possibly why a second series has not been commissioned by Channel 4. However, it has gained quite a significant cult following through word of mouth and the internet, which led to the series being repeated and released on DVD so that a wider audience could enjoy it. Channel 4 started a long-awaited re-run of the series in October 2006 and released the show on DVD in the same month, whilst letting the show be re-watched on Virgin Media's On-demand service. In 2005 it was reported that the channel's cinema division Film Four have asked Holness and Ayoade to write a script for a movie version of their programme.

On July 27 2006, Darkplace made its U.S. debut on Sci-Fi at 10 p.m. EST/PST. It has been airing on the Cartoon Network block Adult Swim every friday since November 9th, 2007.

The series had a spin-off, the spoof chat show Man to Man with Dean Learner, which began on 20 October 2006 on Channel 4. Dean's first guest was Garth Marenghi.

DVD

The complete series was released on DVD (PAL, Region 2 only) on 16 October 2006, including the following special features:

File:DEANVD.jpg

The DEANVD logo on the front cover of the Garth Marenghi's Darkplace DVD.

• Commentaries on all episodes
• A deleted scene
• Test footage
• Original ‘One Track Lover’ Single (Extended Version), along with the Darkplace Theme and three 'Darkplace Moodscapes' by composer Stig Baasvik
• Over an hour of extra talking heads
• Photo galleries
• Original radio ads
• Original storyboards and storyboard to scene comparisons
• An 'easter egg' (containing bonus footage) accessible by selecting, and then fast-forwarding, the 'Colour Bars' feature in the set-up menu
• The entire Darkplace television soundtrack; this can be accessed by either clicking on the picture of Liz Asher in the set-up menu (this method works only if you are watching the DVD on a PC), or selecting One Track Lover to listen to and pressing 'previous', or by using your DVD player's 'Go to Title' feature and then entering the title number 19. The soundtrack is approximately 38 minutes long, and is divided into 24 chapters.

The DVD did fairly well by television DVD standards, reaching the top 10 best-selling DVDs at number 9 in the UK.

The cover of the DVD also features a play on the DVD logo, which instead reads "DEANVD".

External links

• Garth Marenghi's Darkplace at IMDb
• Garth Marenghi's Darkplace at Channel4.com
• Save Darkplace The largest fansite for Darkplace
• Garth Marenghi's Darkplace at tv.com
• Darkplace page on the "official" Garth Marenghi website
• British Sitcom Guide
• BAFTA Nominated Score by Composer Andrew Hewitt
• Avalon Television Watch episode 1 of the series here.