Originally published at: Remembering Garth Marenghi's Darkplace | Boing Boing
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Best. Title sequence. Ever.
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It was on Channel 4, which is not a BBC channel
BBC 4 is where the BBC puts all the niche documentaries and foreign drama programmes.
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I don’t know if anyone has read TerrorTome yet, but I regret to say I found it quite lacking. It might be funnier as an audiobook? The perfect camp of Darkplace doesn’t translate to book format, IMHO. Instead, as a parody of bad horror it mostly just comes off as exactly what it’s parodying, which strips it of humor more often than not.
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I like the inclusion of the old Channel 4 logo and jingle.
Man, Todd Rivers was hot.
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I feel like that many layers of irony is a cop-out
They can say anything’s funny if one of the ways it can be funny is “it’s funny because it’s not funny”
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I usually describe it as Buffy the Vampire Slayer meets General Hospital (the soap opera)
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I love Darkplace and would recommend it to anyone who’s not seen it. The cast is great too. Some of the earliest roles for Richard Ayoade, Matt Berry, Alice Lowe, Julian Barratt, Noel Fielding and others.
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As a fully qualified medical doctor I can attest this is how we work on a daily basis:
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When I found out that isn’t Matt Berry’s real speaking voice I was gutted. It’s the greatest voice on the planet.
His real voice:
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It’s super weird not hearing him to THE VOICE in that…
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The sort of spin-off/follow-up Man to Man with Dean Lerner is also worth a look, though I don’t think it’s as brilliant as Dark place.
I miss that period uring the mid-2000s when I suddenly got an amazing number of stylistic parodies/riffs It all felt like things I had seen as a child, but obviously did not. Darkplace, A Mighty Boosh, Look Around You, and others
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It was a bonkers/great show!
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I think “Man to Man” is more re-watchable; It has those same layers of humor, but with the interview format, it targets various different things to lampoon.
They are both great.
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I’m boycotting any Marenghi-related projects until he and Dean Learner come clean about what they did with Madeleine Wool. Or her various body parts. #JusticeForMadeleine
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I listened to the audiobook narrated by Garth Marenghi and I though it was hilarious. I can see how without Garth’s delivery maintaining that disconnect between what he is producing and what he thinks he is producing it might just come across as exactly what it was meant to lampoon. This may be especially true with the footnotes and other forays into self justification.
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Still available on Channel 4 streaming from what I can see: https://www.channel4.com/programmes/garth-marenghis-darkplace Shows up on my terrible Netgem box.
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On top of being all those things, it’s also pretty clearly a parody of Lars von Trier’s 1994 Danish haunted hospital miniseries, Riget (“The Kingdom”), which had an American version - fittingly written by Stephen King (of whom Garth Marenghi is partially a parody) - in 2004. Lars even did these over-the-top introductions to episodes, that aren’t being directly parodied, but obviously informed Darkplace.
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I saw Matt Berry in ca. 2010 performing (=singing solo with acoustic guitar) in Lewisham (London), including but not limited to “one track lover” ((^_°)). I think Dr. Sanchez’ voice is not very much altered post-production-wise, but part of his repertoire. But they all are very very good actors, of course. And since the Mighty Boosh was mentioned in another post, Noel Fielding and Julian Barratt also have guest appearances in GM’sDP.
“Please accept the shortbread”
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… also of
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