---
title: "Garth Marenghi's Darkplace"
year: 2004
kind: "series"
canonical: "https://film.one/tv/garth-marenghis-darkplace"
fi1m_score: 83
critics_score: 82
critics_reviews: 5
published: "2026-09-17T15:03:04.298532+00:00"
updated: "2026-09-17T15:03:15.727948+00:00"
region: "US"
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."
---

# Garth Marenghi's Darkplace (2004)

Created by Richard Ayoade, Matthew Holness, Billy Brown · 30m · Comedy, Mystery, Action & Adventure, Sci-Fi & Fantasy

**Fi1m score: 83** · Critics 82 (early) from 5 reviews

*In a sentence:* The gates of hell are under a Romford hospital and the acting is worse than anything that comes through them

> Holness and Ayoade’s spoof of a lost 1980s horror serial gets every detail of bad television right, and six half-hours is exactly the right dose. It is one joke, but the joke has been built to last, and it has.

## Synopsis

Horror novelist Garth Marenghi (Matthew Holness) introduces a television series he says he made in the 1980s and nobody would broadcast. It is set at Darkplace Hospital in Romford, built over the gates of hell, where Dr Rick Dagless (Holness again) fights the supernatural between ward rounds. His colleagues are the booming Dr Lucien Sanchez (Matt Berry), Liz Asher (Alice Lowe), who is psychic, and the administrator Thornton Reed (Richard Ayoade), who carries a shotgun. Between scenes, Marenghi, his publisher Dean Learner (Ayoade) and the actor Todd Rivers (Berry) sit in armchairs and explain what they were aiming for.

## Review

Garth Marenghi is a horror novelist who, by his own account, has written more books than he has read. In the 1980s, he tells us, he made a television series so dangerous that nobody would show it. *Darkplace* is that series, six half-hours of it, with Marenghi’s own commentary. None of this is true. Matthew Holness plays Marenghi, and with Richard Ayoade and Billy Brown he has built a spoof of bad 1980s horror television that gets every detail right; Ayoade directs. It is one joke, told for three hours, and it is one of the funniest things British television made in its decade. Our caveat is that you should not watch it all at once.

The craft is in being bad accurately. Martin Hawkins shoots it to look like videotape left in a warm car: the whites bleed, faces run to orange, and the corridors of Dennis De Groot’s hospital are lit flat from above so that nothing casts a shadow. The gates of hell are a doorway with dry ice behind it. Adam Windmill cuts every scene a beat late, holds on actors who have finished speaking, and reaches for slow motion whenever a chair is knocked over. Andrew Hewitt’s synthesiser score swells at the wrong moments and stops dead at the right ones. Every one of these is a mistake somebody chose.

The acting has been tuned the same way. Holness plays Dr Rick Dagless in a whisper, staring at a point just past the camera, a man who has read that heroes are quiet. Matt Berry’s Dr Lucien Sanchez booms, stresses the wrong word in every sentence, and delivers medical information as if announcing a raffle. Ayoade’s Thornton Reed carries a shotgun through a hospital and nobody comments. Alice Lowe’s Liz Asher has the hardest brief: the character exists to be patronised by the men, and Lowe plays her sincerity without a flicker. Bad acting is only funny when the actor knows what the good version would be, and all four do.

Then there are the interviews. Marenghi, his publisher Dean Learner (Ayoade again) and the actor Todd Rivers (Berry again) sit in armchairs and talk about what they made. Learner answers every question as if a lawyer were listening. Marenghi explains his subtext, which turns out to be the same as his text. Rivers appears to have had a drink. These scenes are shot properly, in colour that stays where it is put, and they keep reminding you that the mess in between is a performance.

We laughed until it hurt at Sanchez’s musical number, a power ballad staged as a pop video with a wind machine and smoke, sung by Berry with the seriousness of a man who believes he is a fine singer. It works because nothing in it winks. The same goes for the first episode, in which a colleague of Dagless’s is turned into something we will not describe and the hospital carries on as if this happened most Tuesdays. The show never once lets on that it knows.

The limit is built in. A spoof of bad television has to be bad television for stretches at a time, and there are passages in the middle episodes where the joke is waiting for the next joke. The interviews start to slow the later episodes rather than lift them. And a good deal of it depends on your having sat through the real thing, the cheap anthology shows and video-shop horrors it copies. A viewer who never saw those will still laugh, but will miss about a third of what is being aimed at. Six episodes is the right number.

It sits with the best British spoofs, alongside [*Look Around You*](https://film.one/tv/look-around-you). Most critics rate it about where we do. There was only ever this one series, and it has been quoted ever since, which is longer than most of what it was copying managed.

Watch two episodes at a sitting and no more, late, with the lights down and someone beside you who was alive for the originals. Taken slowly it stays funny. Taken in one go, you begin to see the bad television it is copying rather than the joke about it, and that is a long evening.

*Fi1m score 83, published 17 September 2026.*

## What the critics say

With only 5 reviews in so far, the verdict is unanimous and warm. Every critic reads the series as a spoof of 1980s television horror that works because the joke is aimed at its pompous fictional creator as much as at the shoddy effects and knotted plotting it imitates. The dated look is praised for serving the show-within-a-show premise rather than distracting from it, and several reviewers find it holds up on rewatch. Den of Geek picks out Sanchez’s musical number as a high point. The only disagreement is over whether the horror is any good; nobody doubts the comedy.

### Reviews we read (5)

- **The AV Club**, Erik Adams (90/100, inferred): The critic calls the series a legitimate masterpiece and one of the funniest TV comedies of its era, because the intentionally clumsy supernatural medical drama is filtered through the myopic ego of its fictional creator. [Read](https://www.avclub.com/garth-marenghi-s-brief-hilarious-reign-of-terror-1798241550)
- **Empire**, William Thomas (85/100, inferred): The critic presents the show as a hilarious meta-spoof of terrible 1980s TV horror, with the central joke that it is supposedly a lost masterpiece by the pompous Garth Marenghi. They single out its consistent sharpness and the way it lampoons bad acting, effects and plotting while building a cult following after its cancellation. [Read](https://www.empireonline.com/tv/reviews/garth-marenghi-darkplace-review/)
- **The i Paper**, Alex Nelson (80/100, inferred): The critic calls the series a hilarious, multi-layered spoof with an intentionally dated look that enhances its meta premise about a rejected 1980s horror-medical hybrid show. The offbeat humor remains fresh upon rewatch, thanks to surreal gags and deliberately bad dialogue. [Read](https://inews.co.uk/culture/television/garth-marenghis-darkplace-cult-classic-64361)
- **IndieWire**, Sam Adams (75/100, inferred): The piece positions the series as horror at its worst but comedy at its best, celebrating its spoof of supernatural anthology shows through shoddy production values and over-the-top absurdity. It highlights the cult appeal and the talent of its creators and cast. [Read](https://www.indiewire.com/features/general/garth-marenghis-darkplace-is-horror-at-its-worst-comedy-at-its-best-127356/)
- **Den of Geek**, Gem Wheeler (80/100, inferred): The critic fondly revisits the series as a clever, affectionate spoof of 1980s horror television and pompous creators, highlighting the deliberate low production values, the show-within-a-show structure, and standout moments like Sanchez’s musical number. [Read](https://www.denofgeek.com/tv/looking-back-at-garth-marenghis-darkplace/)

## Details

- **Created by:** Richard Ayoade, Matthew Holness, Billy Brown
- **Creator:** Richard Ayoade, Matthew Holness, Billy Brown
- **Director:** Richard Ayoade
- **Writer:** Richard Ayoade, Matthew Holness
- **Cinematography:** Martin Hawkins
- **Editor:** Adam Windmill
- **Music:** Andrew Hewitt
- **Production design:** Dennis De Groot
- **Producer:** Charlie Hanson
- **Cast:** Matthew Holness as Garth Marenghi / Dr. Rick Dagless M.D.; Matt Berry as Todd Rivers / Dr. Lucien Sanchez; Richard Ayoade as Dean Learner / Thornton Reed; Alice Lowe as Madeleine Wool / Liz Asher; Kim Noble as Jim; Stephen Merchant as The Chef; Julian Barratt as Padre; Noel Fielding as Monkey Man
- **Runtime:** 30m
- **Release (the US):** 29 January 2004
- **Genres:** Comedy, Mystery, Action & Adventure, Sci-Fi & Fantasy

## Where to watch in the US

- Amazon Prime Video: streaming

*Checked 2026-09-17.*

Also available in: GB, IE, US. Add `?region=XX` to this URL for another country.

## If you liked this

- *Look Around You* (2002), Fi1m 83: The same trick played on schools science films, with the same straight face. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/tv/look-around-you.md)
- *Police Squad!* (1982): American cop television taken apart one badly delivered line at a time.
- *The Day Today* (1994): News spoofed by people who clearly loved and loathed it in equal measure.
- *Documentary Now!* (2015): Parody built on getting the grain, the fonts and the pauses exactly right.
- *What We Do in the Shadows* (2014): Flatmates who happen to be vampires, filmed as if for a housing documentary.

---
© 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/tv/garth-marenghis-darkplace