It’s weird that Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace is reentering the zeitgeist because it was literally only about a week ago that I first heard about it from a British friend. (The weird context there is that in a Slack we’re both in, someone posted a picture of a book cover with the title “Curses, Boiled Again!” which seemed to be about a murderous lobster, and then several of us posted pictures of things like the infamous crab with a knife and a picture of a book cover of a real book from a real crab-based horror series titled “Crabs: The Human Sacrifice” by a real author named Guy N Smith, and then my British friend mentioned how that reminded him of Garth Marenghi, and as it turns out in one of the Darkplace episodes there is a brief shot of the cover of a fictional book “Crab” by Garth Marenghi which I assume is a reference to the Guy N Smith series.)
I’m glad to hear it succeeds with the author’s reading. As you say, the footnotes and other asides, in book form comes off as a kind of overly repetitive gag. As a book, the humor needs to stand on its own a little better and not be buoyed so much by “this will sound great coming out of Garth’s mouth.” But now I might have to get the audiobook and enjoy it as it was meant to be.
I suspect there’s at least one hack horror writer that they particularly had in mind, but I don’t know who it was. Some of it feels rather specific…
… a lot of it just seems to be mocking bad '80s television—of which there was no shortage 
Which reminds me of a friend who absolutely refused to read the Princess Bride because he couldn’t find the “original” version by S. Morgenstern, and he refused to read the “abridged” version.
Tweet text, for when Twitter is down
I don’t know who needs to hear this but most of the 1-star Amazon reviews for The Princess Bride by William Goldman are people absolutely IRATE that it isn’t “the original book” and is instead an “abridged version” by “the screenplay writer.”
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FqUQ1z_WcAAEzUA?format=jpg&name=large
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FqUQ1z8XoB8frRS?format=jpg&name=large
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FqUQ11HXoB4Yq2u?format=jpg&name=large
In the specifics of the execution, definitely.
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