Garth Marenghi's 'Darkplace'

Abstract

"Apes of Wrath" is a rather obvious but gloriously inept variation on Planet of the Apes, in which contaminated water supplies cause cast members to revert to a prehistoric state (in fact, this plot line has also been used, even more ridiculously, because it's done in all seriousness, in practically every incarnation of Star Trek, as well as shows like Stargate: SG 1). The recent DVD release of the show comes with a wealth of bonus material, including in-character, crisp-munching, beer-drinking commentary on every episode by Garth Marenghi, Dean Learner and Todd Rivers, and two amusing supplementary documentaries, "Darkplace Illuminata" and "Horrificata Illuminata" in which the main players are interviewed in more extensive detail, as well as several other witty items (including the extended "One Track Lover" single, which "sold over twelve copies") and equally amusing in-character radio ads.

Channel 4 2004 (Region 2 DVD)

First screened on Channel 4 in early 2004, Garth Marenghi's Darkplace was originally shown just before another cheesy hospital-set supernatural drama, Stephen King's rambling and self-indulgent Kingdom Hospital, an ill-advised remake of Danish director Lars Von Trier's acclaimed original miniseries. Unfortunately for Kingdom Hospital, Darkplace's winning, witty piss-take of the worst excesses of 1980s British television and of the self-importance of certain prominent horror writers meant that anyone who watched even five minutes of it hadn't a hope of taking King's bloated misfire seriously: the unlikely spoof was actually much more enjoyable than the genuine article.

Written by (and starring) Mathew Holness and Richard Ayoade, and based upon their 2001 Perrier Award-winning stage show Garth Marenghi's Netherhead, Darkplace consists of six highly entertaining thirty-minute episodes, each of them a comic gem in their own right. It must be said though that the degree of enjoyment you derive from the show's spot-on spoofery depends to a certain extent upon your familiarity with the generic and dramatic conventions it so deftly lampoons.

The show's conceit is a promising one. Holness appears at the beginning of each episode as self-aggrandising, pompous horror writer Garth Marenghi, the author of dodgy sounding novels such as Black Fang (which, according to Marenghi, asked the question, "What if a rat could drive a bus?"), Afterbirth, Crab!! and Sheer (clearly, Marenghi seems to belong to the James Herbert/Sean Huston/Guy N. Smith school of British horror). He is also proudly self-de scribed as "one of the few people you'll meet who has written more books than they've read". As well as treating to us to a few selected extracts from his novels, Marenghi is there to present each episode of Darkplace, "a hospital based horror medical drama set in pre-apocalyptic Romford" made in the 1980s but, according to its creator, considered so radical by the powers-that-be that it was suppressed for twenty years, and only received a brief run in Peru.

Of course, the series itself is all one massive in-joke, a pitch-perfect spoof of the very crappest type of 1980s genre television, complete with cardboard sets, delightfully wooden acting, overblown dialogue, casual sexism and artfully risible special effects. Each episode also features self-important behind-the-scenes style commentary from Marenghi and surviving co-stars Todd Rivers and Dean Learner (who is also Marenghi's publisher).

Marenghi, modestly described as "author, visionary, dream weaver, plus actor" of course plays the hero of the show, ex-Warlock "Dr Rick Dagless M.D.", veteran of both 'Nam and the Falklands. His fellow Vet and best buddy, Lucien Sanchez (Todd Rivers/the multi-talented Matt Berry) is a debonair ladies' man and hot-shot surgeon, whilst the other main players are ball-busting bureaucrat Thornton Reed (Dean Learner/ Richard Ayoade) and Liz Asher (Madeline Wool/Alice Lowe) "a lady doctor with psychic powers" whose arrival in Darkplace kicks off the first episode, "Once Upon A Beginning". Liz, who is prone to deliberately cheesy visions of the sort experienced by Amy Irving in Brian De Palma's The Fury, soon realises that something is terribly wrong in Darkplace Hospital, which experiences far more than its fair share of supernatural incident.

Much of the pleasure in watching the show comes from the wealth of incidental detail on display in each scene - the authentically dire synth soundtrack, 80s hairstyles and fashion, erratic continuity, and bad acting (at which Ayoade in particular excels: as non-actor-Dean Lemer-playing-Thornton Reed he's forever looking slightly to one side in each scene, as if desperately seeking a prompt from off stage. It's worth watching the show for his calculatedly awful delivery of dialogue alone). The writing itself is often very funny, in much the same way that the original Airplane movie was funny. Many of the best lines in the show derive from deadpan "Surely you can't be serious?" "I am serious, and don't call me Shirley" style exchanges, as when Sanchez introduces himself to his new colleague:

Sanchez (with mild disbelief): "I'm Dr Sanchez. You're a woman"

Liz Asher (in a tone of absolute earnestness): "Yes. I hope that's not a problem".

Or when Marenghi-as-Dagless, in his role as a pioneering paediatrician, does his best to comfort a small boy in the "Kiddie Ward": "We're doing all we can. But I'm not Jesus Christ" (slight pause). "I've come to accept that now." Or when he explains the reasons for his cynical demeanour: "Maybe if everyone close to you had died, you'd be sarcastic too".

During the first episode, we learn that Dagless and his old friend Larry (later dispatched in spectacularly gory fashion via a shovel to the head), once opened a Buffy-style gate to hell in the canteen, which is the cause of all the trouble. The period-authentic sexism present here is further played for laughs in Episode Two, "Hell Hath Fury", a genuinely funny Carrie rip-off in which Liz's repressed psychokinetic abilities are violently unleashed and a number of bit-players (including Steve Merchant of The Office and Extras' fame) are killed by household implements. We also leam that the goal of the "Garth Marenghi Foundation" is to harness psychic abilities in underprivileged children. Episode Three, "Skipper the Eye Child" is even better, particularly when Marenghi explains to us at the beginning of the episode that the story was inspired by the fact that "I was told when I was 16 that my balls didn't work", and that the anxieties which resulted were funnelled into this unlikely tale of a giant mutant eyeball (created when the eye of a sex offender fell into a nuclear reactor during experimental gamma-ray therapy, apparently). Rather than kill the gruesome "eye child" which results, Dagless, still traumatised by the tragic death of his own mutant son (bom with the head of a grasshopper) goes on the run, and names the thing "Skipper". As Marenghi solemnly explains during the story, "this episode is about my own desire to have a son. I have four daughters, and whilst I don't blame them as such, I don't feel that they're on my side". I'm not quite sure why, but I find the dedication at the end of the episode - which consists of a photo of a golden retriever and the words, "In memory of Skipper. Killed by wasps" one of the funniest things about the whole show.

"Apes of Wrath" is a rather obvious but gloriously inept variation on Planet of the Apes, in which contaminated water supplies cause cast members to revert to a prehistoric state (in fact, this plot line has also been used, even more ridiculously, because

it's done in all seriousness, in practically every incarnation of Star Trek, as well as shows like Stargate: SG 1). We also learn from the commentaries here that actress Madeline Wool went missing shortly after the filming of the last episode, and that she is now believed dead, "possibly somewhere in the former Eastern Block", as Dean Learner matter-of-a-factly informs us. Perhaps best of the lot is Episode Five, "Scotch Mist", a hilarious spoof of John Carpenter's The Fog in which ghostly Scottish warriors descend upon Darkplace in order to "kill the Queen and end our way of life - what every Scotchman wants". Along the way, we get some extended banter between Sanch and Liz about the pitfalls of cheap batteries, and, funniest of all, we are treated to Dag's deeply xenophobic monologue about an unintended stop-over in Glasgow, the reason for the haunting in the first place.

Darkplace concludes, perhaps inevitably, with Lovecraftain spoof "The Creeping Moss from the Shores of Shuggoth", in which Sanchez unwisely falls in love with a patient infected by cosmic spores which are gradually turning her into broccoli. The highlights here are a gleefully inept bar-fight scene, the musical number "One Track Lover", performed by a love-sick Sanchez, and the unforgettable lines: "Boil Linda? Over my dead body, you bastard!" We also get a photographic montage (due to missing footage which now rests at the bottom of the Thames) of the climactic scene in which Dagless and Reed have to remove Sanchez's broccoli-infected penis.

The recent DVD release of the show comes with a wealth of bonus material, including in-character, crisp-munching, beer-drinking commentary on every episode by Garth Marenghi, Dean Learner and Todd Rivers, and two amusing supplementary documentaries, "Darkplace Illuminata" and "Horrificata Illuminata" in which the main players are interviewed in more extensive detail, as well as several other witty items (including the extended "One Track Lover" single, which "sold over twelve copies") and equally amusing in-character radio ads. As a knowing spoof-within-a-spoof, one could see how the joke may well have worn off had the show lasted much longer than six episodes, but as it stands, Garth Marenghi's Darkplace is a pleasure to watch, for the piss-taking at work here clearly derives from a real affection towards, and appreciation of, the horror genre's guiltier pleasures. It may not change the course of human evolution, as Marenghi confidently predicts at the beginning of the first episode, but Darkplace will definitely make you laugh.

Bernice M. Murphy

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