--- name: "Matthew Holness" canonical: "https://film.one/person/matthew-holness" roles: ["Actor"] born: "1 January 1975" reviewed_on_fi1m: 3 average_fi1m_score: 84 average_as: "actor" average_over: 3 updated: "2026-09-17T17:39:56.062417+00:00" licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL." --- # Matthew Holness Actor. Born 1 January 1975 in Whitstable, Kent, England. ## Details - **Work:** Actor - **Born:** 1 January 1975, Whitstable, Kent, England - **Active:** 2001–2013 - **Average Fi1m score:** 84, as actor, over 3 titles - **Fi1m score by decade:** 2000s 86 (2), 2010s 80 (1) - **Score spread:** 3 at 80+, 0 at 60–79, 0 under 60 - **Lead roles:** 1 of 1 acting credits billed first or second - **Genres:** Comedy 3, Action & Adventure 1, Mystery 1, Sci-Fi & Fantasy 1 - **Elsewhere:** https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_Holness, https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q6790695, https://www.imdb.com/name/nm1478358/, https://www.themoviedb.org/person/116267 ## Streaming the US now - **Amazon Prime Video:** [*Garth Marenghi's Darkplace*](https://film.one/tv/garth-marenghis-darkplace.md) (83) For United States; add `?region=XX` for another country. ## Fi1m on Matthew Holness > Holness made one of the funniest things British television produced in its decade and then walked away from comedy almost entirely. *Garth Marenghi's Darkplace* is the reason to know his name; the horror he has made since is where he wants to be. Dr Rick Dagless whispers. Matthew Holness plays him staring at a point just past the camera, a man who has read somewhere that heroes are quiet and has taken it as an instruction. Around him Matt Berry booms and Richard Ayoade carries a shotgun through a hospital, and Holness holds still, which is the harder job. Then he steps out of the show as Garth Marenghi, horror novelist, who by his own account has written more books than he has read, and introduces each episode with a gravity the footage cannot support. Both parts are the same joke, and Holness plays both without once letting on that he knows. *Garth Marenghi's Darkplace* (2004) runs six half-hours, built with Ayoade and Billy Brown, and it is the reason most people know his name. The character came first, on stage at the Edinburgh Fringe; the series then got every detail of bad 1980s horror television right, down to the wrong word stressed in every sentence. We scored it 83 and stand by that, with the caveat that it is one joke and should be taken an episode at a time. Before it there was Simon, the IT technician in the second series of *The Office* (2001), the awkward, faintly snotty sort he has gone on playing in other people's comedies ever since. And then, for the best part of a decade, not much that anybody saw. Critics took to calling him the lost boy of British comedy, which missed the point: he had not gone missing, he had gone into horror. *A Gun for George* (2011), a short he wrote, directed and acted in, follows a hack writer who mythologises himself, Marenghi with the laughs taken out. *Possum* (2018), his first feature, adapted from his own short story, is a psychological horror about a damaged and unreliable man, its dread built from picture and sound rather than shocks. We have not reviewed it and will not judge it here. Alice Lowe, who played Liz Asher's sincerity in *Darkplace* without a flicker, is one of the few collaborators he has worked with twice. What made *Darkplace* last is that Holness knows what the good version of every bad scene would be. We laughed hardest not at Berry announcing medical news like a raffle but at Holness beside him, face perfectly still, because the joke only works if somebody on screen believes the scene is good, and Dagless believes it completely. The same knowledge of the genre, turned the right way up, is what he has been using since. When he revived Marenghi for a run of books from 2022, he told an interviewer, "I'm not interested in doing comedy." We believe him about as far as anyone can believe a man who has just brought Garth Marenghi back. ## Biography Matthew Holness is a British comedian, actor, writer and director. He created the fictional horror author Garth Marenghi and starred as the character, also playing Dr Rick Dagless M.D., in the 2004 Channel 4 series *Garth Marenghi's Darkplace*, which he co-wrote with Richard Ayoade. Born in Whitstable, Kent, Holness read English at Trinity Hall, Cambridge, where he was vice-president of the Cambridge Footlights. His contemporaries included David Mitchell, Robert Webb and Richard Ayoade. He first appeared on television in the 2000 BBC series *Bruiser* and won the Perrier Award at the Edinburgh Fringe for the stage show *Garth Marenghi's Fright Knight*. Holness has appeared in *The Office* (2002) as Simon, *Cemetery Junction* (2010), *Life's Too Short* (2011), *Toast of London* (2013) and *Friday Night Dinner* (2011). He wrote and directed the 2018 feature film *Possum* and has published books under the Garth Marenghi name. *Sources: en.wikipedia.org, inews.co.uk.* ## On Fi1m (3) - *Toast of London* (2013), Fi1m 80, as Max Gland — [page](https://film.one/tv/toast-of-london.md) - *Garth Marenghi's Darkplace* (2004), Fi1m 83, as Garth Marenghi / Dr. Rick Dagless M.D. — [page](https://film.one/tv/garth-marenghis-darkplace.md) - *The Office* (2001), Fi1m 89, as Simon — [page](https://film.one/tv/the-office.md) ## Complete filmography (24) Every credit, newest first. Titles without a page can be requested for review on the HTML page. - *Dodger Special: Bad Egg* (2023), as Sir Denholm Havers - *Toast of Tinseltown* (2022), series, as Richard Chickentoss - *We Are Lady Parts* (2021), series, as Gameshow host - *The Haunting of Bly Manor* (2020), series, as Dominic Wingrave - *Year of the Rabbit* (2019), series, as Hector, Crown Prince of Bulgaria - *Possum* (2018), Writer, Director - *Back* (2017), series, as Laurie - *Italia Violenta* (2015), Acting - *Toast of London* (2013), series, as Max Gland — Fi1m 80, [page](https://film.one/tv/toast-of-london.md) - *The Snipist* (2012), Director, Writer - *Playhouse Presents* (2012), series, Writer, Director - *Life's Too Short* (2011), series, as Ian - *A Gun for George* (2011), Terry / George / The Reprisalizer, Music, Director, Writer - *Friday Night Dinner* (2011), series, as Chris Parker - *Cemetery Junction* (2010), as Band Leader - *Free Agents* (2009), series, Acting - *Man to Man with Dean Learner* (2006), series, Garth Marenghi, Steve Pising, Glynn Nimron, Merriman Weir, Amir Chanan, Randolph Caer / Garth Marenghi / Glynn Nimron / Steve Pising / Amir Chanan, Writer, Creator - *Darkplace Illuminatum* (2006), Garth Marenghi, Writer - *Horrificata Illuminata* (2006), Garth Marenghi, Writer - *Time Trumpet* (2006), series, Acting - *Festival* (2005), as Roger - Lighting Man - *Garth Marenghi's Darkplace* (2004), series, Garth Marenghi / Dr. Rick Dagless M.D., Writer, Creator — Fi1m 83, [page](https://film.one/tv/garth-marenghis-darkplace.md) - *The Office* (2001), series, as Simon — Fi1m 89, [page](https://film.one/tv/the-office.md) - *Bruiser* (2000), series, as Additional Writing ## Gallery - ![Matthew Holness](https://film.one/media/person/388292/gallery-81d2b935d29c.jpg) Matthew Holness — British Library, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons (https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/16/Matthew_Holness_in_2023.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail_unscaled) - ![Matthew Holness](https://film.one/media/person/388292/gallery-38af36ddb978.jpg) Matthew Holness — Image via TMDB --- © Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL. Canonical: https://film.one/person/matthew-holness