Garth Marenghi's Darkplace

Started by squints, January 07, 2008, 09:20:49 PM

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squints





From Wikipedia:

The premise of the series is that in the mid-1980s, Garth Marenghi and his publisher Dean Learner made their own TV series on a shoestring budget. Set in Darkplace Hospital in Romford, East London Garth Marenghi's Darkplace tells of the adventures of Dr. Rick Dagless, MD, as he fights the forces of darkness while simultaneously coping with the pressures of running a modern hospital.

In reality the series is a deliberate send-up both of the horror genre and of 1980s TV production. Action series such as Blake's 7, Doctor Who, The A-Team, The Sweeney, cult drama Twin Peaks and various American medical dramas are also obvious influences, and the comedy relies partly on familiarity with such programmes. More obscurely, Darkplace makes reference to Lars von Trier's "haunted hospital" TV series The Kingdom (Riget in Danish), which was later remade by Stephen King for an American audience as Kingdom Hospital. Much of the show could be taken as a parody of King's work (with the flying staplers and other deadly inanimate objects of Hell Hath Fury, for example, being a fairly direct parody of King's Maximum Overdrive and similar works).


First part of first episode: (Most of the first episode is in bits on youtube)

The official website (which is pretty funny): http://www.garthmarenghi.com/

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The only mention of this show on the board was by mod in the tv.links thread.
Has anyone else seen this? Garam are you out there?
They've recently started showing episodes on Adult Swim. My friend has the dvd and i think this show is great. In my opinion its on par with the British Office as far as pure originality. I hear Dean from the show has his own talk show now but i haven't found it anywhere.
If you've at least seen Twin Peaks i think you'll dig this.
"The myth by no means finds its adequate objectification in the spoken word. The structure of the scenes and the visible imagery reveal a deeper wisdom than the poet himself is able to put into words and concepts" – Friedrich Nietzsche

Ghostboy

I've only seen a few episodes, but yeah, this is pretty droll and hilarious.

The friend who introduced me to it also played Dean's talk show for me, but I don't know where he got it.

Sleepless

One of my mates got me this DVD for Christmas. I've watched the first 3 episodes so far. It has its moments, but I don't think it's that great really. So far the first episode was the best, but I think that's largely for the novelty factor more that cleverness or genuine funniness. I did like the bit where they show their complete incompitance at putting a TV show together by saying "pretty much every episode came in 8 minutes short, so basically whenever someone isn't speaking we switch to slow-motion."
He held on. The dolphin and all the rest of its pod turned and swam out to sea, and still he held on. This is it, he thought. Then he remembered that they were air-breathers too. It was going to be all right.

grand theft sparrow

I like the show but the problem with it is that the show-within-the-show reached its full potential by the 2nd or 4rd episode.  However, the potential of the character of Garth Marenghi is largely untapped.  I love that his ego and mediocrity drip from every inch of the show but a "reality" show where he's investigating the occult or ghost hunting or something like that would be incredible.

RegularKarate

Yeah, this is a funny show... and it's perfect and such few episodes because the novelty would have worn off quickly, but I suppose they could have just gone another direction for future series. 

Hopefully since it's on Adult Swim, the Region 1 DVD will get released soon.  I've had crummy torrents for a while now.

as dumb as it is, Dean Learner's character cracks me up every time he forgets how to stand or hold things.