Saturday, November 17, 2007

Garth Marenghi's Darkplace

I have just discovered a called Garth Marenghi's Darkplace, and it is probably the best 6 episode show I have ever seen. I first saw the show on adultswim.com, and at the time I thought it was an adultswim production. In fact, it originally aired in the UK back in 2004. All of the episodes are available on youtube, and adultswim is continuing to air them.
Matthew Holness (second from right in the photo) plays Garth Marenghi, a horror writer. Garth wrote, directed and starred as Dr. Rick Dagless in Garth Marenghi's Darkplace, which was supposed to have originally aired in the 1980's. Now the show has been resurrected by the network, and spruced up with commentary from Marenghi, and two other members of the cast. Marenghi is a very David Brent-esque type of character - so you'll probably like this show more if you think that's funny. The show features a lot of intentionally bad acting and editing, which are all pretty enjoyable. A few of my favorite features of this show are:
  • that all the characters seem to carry guns, even though they are doctors working in a hospital
  • the male characters thoroughly berate the lone female character, frequently driving her to tears
  • Dr. Dagless inexplicably drives a Knight Rider style golf cart around the hospital grounds
After just moments of watching the show, I thought that there was something familiar about Marenghi/Dr. Dagless. It turns out that he played the computer geek in an episode of BBC's The Office, which he was quite good in. I have included the show intro to Darkplace (which I think are pretty funny on their own), and a clip from The Office.

The Show Intro:


A clip of Darkplace star, Matthew Holness, as the "computer geek" from BBC's The Office:

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