Garth Marenghi's Darkplace2004
“FROM THE BEST-SELLING MASTER OF DARKNESS”
Created by Richard Ayoade, Matthew Holness
On the charts
🏆 Nominated for 1 BAFTA Award1 nomination total
The premise
When the Hellmouth opens beneath Darkplace Hospital in downtown Romford, kiddy doctor, Vietnam veteran and ex-warlock Dr. Rick Dagless M.D. is the only man who can close it. Joined by best buddy Dr. Lucien Sanchez, fiery hospital boss Thornton Reed, and woman Liz Asher, Dagless must fight the forces of Darkness while dealing with the burden of day-to-day admin. From the chilling pen of best-selling horror writer Garth Marenghi comes this lost masterpiece of televisual terror. Dare you enter Garth's Darkplace?
Horror Vault's take
Presented as a "rediscovered" lost TV series from the 1980s, Garth Marenghi's Darkplace skewers the era's low-budget genre television with surgical, loving precision. A pompous horror novelist named Garth Marenghi serves as showrunner, writer, director, and lead actor of his own vanity production — set in a hospital perched above a literal Hellmouth. The result is a layered parody that works simultaneously as a pitch-perfect spoof of bad TV and as genuinely inventive comedy horror in its own right. Intercut talking-head interviews with the insufferably self-important cast add another dimension of deadpan hilarity.
Content: Comedic Violence, Intentionally Campy Gore
Episode Guide
S1.E1 · Once Upon a BeginningPremiere8.8Jan 29, 2004 · 24 min · Dir: Richard Ayoade
New doctor Liz Asher is tipped off by a psychic cat that evil lurks in the cooridors of Darkplace. When a patient mysteriously dies, Dr. Rick Dagless M.D. must scalpel-up and close a standard-sized hell-mouth beneath Romford. Contains mild
S1.E2 · Hell Hath Fury8.6Feb 5, 2004 · 24 min · Dir: Richard Ayoade
The hospital chef is savagely attacked by a ladle and then a fork. Who or what threw one or both of them? And why are objects flying about of their own accord, attacking innocent civillians and disrupting hospital procedure? Meanwhile Dagle
S1.E3 · Skipper the Eyechild8.3Feb 12, 2004 · 24 min · Dir: Richard Ayoade
The past is stirring in the halls of Darkplace, and for Dr. Rick Dagless M.D., that means Trouble. With a capital T (the rest of the letters lowercase). A giant eye has been born on 'B' Wing. Winner of the Prix de L'Oeil International Optic
S1.E4 · The Apes of Wrath8.0Feb 19, 2004 · 24 min · Dir: Richard Ayoade
Monkey business most macabre. A terrible sickness is spreading from ward to ward as humans regress to a primal state. Dr. Rick Dagless M.D. must kill the beast within us, and fast. i.e. before it's too late.
S1.E5 · Scotch Mist7.8Feb 26, 2004 · 24 min · Dir: Richard Ayoade
A lethal mist surrounds Darkplace, tartanning the hides of unwary travellers, while phantom bagpipes play on regardless. Dr. Rick Dagless M.D. must face more than the music as he unravels the secret behind its sudden appearance. The truth,
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