I’m writing about an English TV show AGAIN. I’m sorry. I did establish in my last post that I’m an anglophile. So what can I say? I bleedin’ love ‘em Brits! My topic, however, differs dramatically from my previous ones; instead of writing about something that really scared or disturbed me, I’m writing about a quality horror spoof that really made me laugh. It captures all the clichés, tropes and atmosphere of eighties television and horror B-movies succinctly. It’s called Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace.
The show is supposedly an unaired horror TV show called Darkplace that was filmed in the eighties and has now been requested for airing by a television network. Darkplace was written by a horror author called Garth Marenghi, and the episodes are interrupted from time to time by comments from Mr Marenghi, his co-stars and his publisher/producer, Dean Learner. Marenghi and Learner are fictional characters wonderfully portrayed by Matthew Hollness and Richard Ayoade, respectively (these two also wrote the real series, and Richard directed). The show is set in a hospital (Darkplace), where the characters experience a series of supernatural events. In Darkplace the gates of Hell are opened, vengeful Scotsmen arrive in a mist, and Skipper the Eyechild is born.
Now, where to begin? This show parodies the eighties pseudo-dramatic B-movies and TV shows wonderfully. The overall visual style of the eighties shows very prominently as well; the opening credits immediately reminded me of MacGyver on the very first viewing. Bad acting, badly timed action, defective camera-angles, horrible dialogue, shoddy voice editing and nostalgic synth music are all mocked, in my opinion, rather tastefully in this melange of everything that was done badly a couple of decades ago. I just have to give you a taste of the dialogue that serves in itself as spoof:
Dr. Liz Asher: Hi, I’ve come to apply for the doctor’s job. I can assure you my credentials are top-notch, I’ve just graduated from Harvard College Yale. I aced every semester, and I got an ‘A’.
Receptionist: Well that sounds excellent. Our last doctor only just recently died in horrific circumstances. Can you start immediately?
Dr. Liz Asher: Sure, do I have time to go to the toilet?
Receptionist: Not really, I’ve just paged Dr. Sanchez to come and pick you up.
Dr. Lucien Sanchez: I’m Dr. Sanchez! You’re a woman.
Dr. Liz Asher: Yes, I hope that’s not a problem.
Dr. Lucien Sanchez: Not at all. There’s plenty of skirt on the ward, this is the 20th century after all though some don’t like to admit it. Welcome to Darkplace, Liz.
This excerpt is from the first episode. What an ingenious mixture of inaccurate storyline, occupational gender stereotyping, and overall unimaginative lines.
I’m a big fan of parody through exaggerated use of tropes and clichés, and leaving it at that. I’ve been very frustrated with a string of parodies that have emerged from Hollywood in the noughties, especially Scary Movie and its endless successors. The problem with the likes of Scary Movie is that the decent exaggerative gags are demeaned by idiotic jokes about bodily waste and sex, as if to make sure the audience has something to laugh at if they don’t get the actual parody gag. Give the audience a break, have some respect for the viewer. Geez. Therefore watching spoofs that rely on the audience getting the joke is something I cherish lovingly in this world of sub-par spoofs. Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace is exactly that and nothing more; all the humour is derived from magnifying the silliness of television drama and B-movies in the eighties, not adding anything unnecessary to it.
I have to admit that I was genuinely creeped out a couple of times while watching this show. Dr. Liz’s premonition of patient Renwick’s death in the very beginning of the first episode was one of these, and the actual death another. There’s something about really crappy effects and horrible sound effects that manages to give me a proper fright. I’m speculating that this might have something to do with the fact that I was a very small child in the late eighties and early nineties and these crappy effects actually did scare me genuinely when they were broadcast on television. The shoddy voice editing I mentioned earlier is also something that frightens me. The voice not correlating with the picture has interesting connotations with insanity in my head.
Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace creates its parody by using all the audio-visual media that are available in television, in addition to brilliantly bad writing and skilfully depicted bad acting. By incorporating voice editing and camera angles into the humour it takes spoofing to the next level. At least I had never seen the likes of it before, but I’m sure I’ve missed a whole bunch of wonderful parodies, feel free to correct me here. Nevertheless, Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace is an all-around quality parody that doesn’t include one crude joke about genitalia or excrement. All jokes relate to B-movies, eighties television and over-inflated “artistic” egos, which is exactly how is should be. Plus, episode six contains the best eighties music video I’ve ever seen!
“I’m Garth Marenghi. Author. Dreamweaver. Visionary. Plus Actor. You’re about to enter the world of my imagination. You are entering my Darkplace.” – Garth Marenghi –
