#WTW: Garth Marenghi's Darkplace

(#WhatThomWatched the XVIIIth)

Garth Marenghi's Darkplace

(2004, Richard Ayoade; Streaming via Hulu)

Right up front, props to Twitter user @JimmyFrohman who noted this gem in Hulu’s deep catalog a couple months ago. There are a passel of BBC comedies old and new on Hulu with little to announce them* — although, tragically, not The Mighty Boosh. Not yet, anyway.

A parody/satire has to have a target, and the target in Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace is deliciously twisty: Show co-creator Matt Holness plays Marenghi, a Stephen King-like prolific and bestselling author of thick horror hardbacks; he and his editor Dean Learner (played by co-creator Richard Ayoade) were given a BBC 4 hospital-set horror series back in the 1980’s, for which (we are told) Marenghi wrote, produced, directed and starred in all fifty episodes. But because the show was so ahead of its time, the BBC ultimately refused to air it. Now, in 2004, Marenghi and Learner have been allowed to release a retrospective six episodes, with their contemporary comments and co-star interviews added in. Of course, the two are sublimely unaware of how awful the show is — Marenghi is a pompous ass as “Dr. Rick Dagless M.D.”; Learner’s hospital administrator “Thornton Reed” is wooden and affectless; co-star Todd Rivers as “Dr. Lucien Sanchez” (Matt Berry) is apparently overdubbed in post-production, badly; and Madeleine Wool as “Dr. Liz Asher” (Alice Lowe) is visibly irritated by both the sexist scripts and Marenghi. (As an example of the clever levels that the show is working on, Alice Lowe’s character has disappeared after the original filming of Darkplace and isn’t available for the contemporary interviews, allowing her male co-stars to misinterpret and misattribute her behavior from the 80’s.)

The joy with a tone parody like this one is in the details. Darkplace features a cheap videotaped look, no-budget special effects, and limited sets that appear repeatedly; taking it further, however, are elements which hint at “choices” that were made during production (like the overdubbing of Berry’s character already noted). These include scenes in a golf cart which the characters are theoretically driving while curtains at the back of the static set are clearly visible, and a shootout in a room of warehouse shelves of boxes (ostensibly water bottles) behind a door helpfully labeled as water-and-mirror storage (on a taped-up cardboard sign). Lines are universally cliché-ridden and melodramatic; extras are ineptly used throughout, like the actor who stands in scenes so that Holness has someone to monologue at, or the pediatric patient who exists only to idolize him.

Holness-as-Marenghi is self-important and clueless, prone to false-modest statements about his writing prowess; Holness-as-Marenghi-as-Dagless is a preening blowhard who ends each show with a reflective voiceover on a roof set. Ayoade-as-Learner and Ayoade-as-Learner-as-Reed are identical; Learner states repeatedly that he’s a terrible actor and his performances are often cut up in ways which hint at required heavy editing. While Holness is a thorough simpleton, there are several hints that Ayoade’s genial character is actually tamping down some kind of horrendous temper; the missing Lowe may have actually been the victim of some sort of foul play at his hands. Ayoade is also directing all of these episodes and so deserves the credit for a lot of these subtle touches.

A critic of this show will note that it’s a one-joke concept, with nothing new or different happening from episode to episode, but it’s also possible to argue that there are subtleties of performance here which are easier to detect with three hours of running time than they would be with 30 or 60 minutes. Six episodes also gives some room for surprising differences, as if to indicate that Marenghi and Learner weren’t sure of their show’s tone over the (supposedly) 50 episodes which were shot; a standout example is a full-on early-MTV-style music video for a song sung by Berry in one episode, which doesn’t have an analogue in any other chapter. There’s also more room for secondary guest characters performed by a stellar set of contemporary comic actors including Julian Barratt as the hospital’s priest and Stephen Merchant as a cook. The show succeeds or fails based on its complete dedication to the premise; ironically, in succeeding completely, the episodes are actually somewhat painful to watch. Rather than attempt a second series, Holness and Ayoade followed up with a sham talk show format two years later (Man to Man with Dean Learner), in which Ayoade’s Learner interviews a different celebrity each week (and each celebrity is a different Holness character). Inevitably, the first episode is an interview with Marenghi.

Reminds me of:

It almost goes without saying: The divine The IT Crowd, also a brainchild of Ayoade along with Chris O’Dowd, Katherine Parkinson, and writer/director Graham Linehan (who himself cameos in Darkplace). IT Crowd has an even better part for Ayoade as Moss, the uber-computer geek, and (in its latter seasons) features Berry as well. Ayoade was already one of my absolutely favorite people based on this series plus his debut feature film as a writer/director, Submarine. To find this earlier work of his was a joy.

Moving backwards just a tick in the universe of English comic actors, my favorite part of Steve Coogan’s mammoth box set of early works (released in 2009) was his one-off series broadcast in 2001, Dr. Terrible’s House of Horrible; it is a pitch-perfect parody of television horror anthologies with six outstanding segments, each cast with Coogan and a revolving set of actors but not otherwise connected except for Coogan’s heavily made-up host, Dr. Terrible. Note that these shows are not supposed to be messy or carelessly produced like Darkplace except in very specific instances; instead, each is an exact replica of a different style/type of actual anthology show (Doctor Who, specific Hammer films like Witchfinder General, specific horror tropes like the transplanted-limb-with-a-mind-of-its-own, and so forth.) (On second thought, this is my second-favorite early Coogan show, behind another anthology concept from 1995, Coogan’s Run. I’ll put these in my rewatch list for a future #WTW; they are amazing works although less known in the U.S. than his Saxondale and Alan Partridge vehicles Knowing Me, Knowing You and I’m Alan Partridge.)

But then — the guilt!

With all the cross-pollination that exists between these actors and writers, there are still so many shows and movies that I haven’t watched: Matt Berry’s Snuff Box and the current Toast of London, Holness and Ayoade’s follow-up show, Ayoade’s second film The Double, Chris O’Dowd’s current Moone Boy, and so on. Some are easy to come by via American streaming services and others might take more time to track down.

I’ve also never read a single Stephen King book. I’m so ashamed!**

Pitch:

The show uses an authentic period BBC 4 logo and comes in and out of commercial breaks with a supremely cheesy video effect featuring a still of Marenghi’s head separating to reveal the show title. If you feel, as I do, that this gets funnier every time you see it, then Darkplace is most definitely for you.

* I myself was motivated to start subscribing to Hulu+ in the first place when I realized it was the only place we could stream The Thick of It in the states and watch the new Doctor, Peter Capaldi, in his cursing-li-est element. It’s just delightful! (Netflix-only folks, you can try the t.v. movie In the Loop to see the same character in action.)

** Oddly enough for someone who’s never read a Stephen King book, I recently read NOS4A2 by his son Joe Hill. It’s great! I hear his dad’s books are okay too.

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