Garth Marenghi's Darkplace is a British horror parody television series created by Richard Ayoade and Matthew Holness for Channel 4. The show focuses on fictional horror author Garth Marenghi (played by Holness) and his publisher Dean Learner (played by Ayoade), characters who originated in the stage show Garth Marenghi's Fright Knight.

The series is presented as a special release of the fictional television series Darkplace. Within the reality of the show, Darkplace was produced in the 1980s for Channel 4, but never broadcast anywhere but Peru, eventually becoming a lost series. Saved footage has recently resurfaced, with Marenghi republishing with the intent of gaining interest from a modern audience. The "original footage" of the show is intercut or bookended with commentary from many of the "original" cast, where characters such as Marenghi and Learner reflect on what it was like to make the show. Darkplace parodies the fashion, special effects, production gaffes, and music of low-budget '80s television, as well as the arrogant attitude of certain writers and performers.

Garth Marenghi's Darkplace was broadcast in a late-night timeslot, with very little advertising, and met with poor viewing figures. It built up a significant internet following, leading Channel 4 to repeat the series and produce a DVD release. In 2005, Channel 4's Film4 asked Holness and Ayoade to write a script for a film adaptation, but the project never saw further development.

The show was later broadcast in the United States on the Sci-Fi Channel and Adult Swim The show presents Garth Marenghi's Darkplace as though it were a real, low-budget television series produced in the 1980s and is now getting its first screening, framed as part of a director's commentary series. Darkplaces fictional show-within-a-show includes deliberately poor production and special effects, sub-par acting, choppy editing and storylines that are "severely flawed and open-ended". This is interspersed with present-day interviews with the cast.

The series' fictional premise is that some time in the 1980s, bestselling horror author Garth Marenghi and his publisher/publicist, Dean Learner, made their own low-budget television series with a single intent: "to change the evolutionary course of Man over a series of half-hour episodes." Set in Darkplace Hospital, "over the very gates of Hell", in Romford, London, the official website speaks of Garth Marenghi, and other characters as though they were real people, while making no mention of the real actors. Press releases also contained "realistic looking fake back stories for Marenghi and the other characters instead of making any mention of what the real cast have appeared in", "More than a few" people and media outlets were caught out by this fictional framing.

Characters

  • Matthew Holness as Garth Marenghi, "author, dream weaver, visionary, plus actor", who plays Dr Rick Dagless, M.D.: 'Dag' is a Vietnam and Falklands War veteran and former warlock.
  • Richard Ayoade as Dean Learner, Garth's publisher, who plays Thornton Reed, a hospital administrator who bears a trademark shotgun and answers to unseen hospital boss "Won Ton".
  • Matt Berry as Todd Rivers, an actor who plays Dr Lucien Sanchez: Improbably handsome with the disconcerting habit of losing lip-synch, "impossibly coiffured hair", and a voice an octave lower than it should be. He generally uses a semi-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: a stereotypical fluffy blonde with occasional psychic powers (sometimes exacerbated by heightened emotion).
  • Kim Noble as Jim, a hospital worker whose main function is to listen to Dagless reel off a lengthy speech and respond with a "yes" or other monosyllabic reply.
  • Stuart Silver appears as "The Extra": a character whose name is unknown and has been a doctor, receptionist, keyboard soloist and barman.
  • Julian Barratt as the hospital's vicar, whom Dagless refers to as "Padre".
  • Graham Linehan as Darkplace's porter.
  • Stephen Merchant as Darkplace's chef.
  • Diego the Dog as Darkplace's sidekick

Noel Fielding appears as a mutant "Ape-oid" in Episode 4, "The Apes of Wrath".

== Episodes ==<!-- This section is linked from Hell Hath Fury -->

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

Reception

Rotten Tomatoes gives the series an 87% rating based on reviews from 23 critics, with an average rating of 6.7/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "The short-lived Garth Marenghi's Darkplace is strangely brilliant, even while buried under its own layers of satire."

Broadcasts

Darkplace originally aired in 2004. Only one series was produced. There is media speculation that the "average" or "poor" viewing figures led Channel 4 to decide against commissioning a second series. Channel 4 started a re-run of the series in October 2006 and released the show on DVD in the same month, while allowing the show to be re-broadcast on Virgin Media's On-demand service. In 2005, it was reported that the channel's cinema division, Film Four, had asked Holness and Ayoade to write a script for a film version of their programme.