YMMV / Garth Marenghi's Darkplace

• Adaptation Displacement: Most of the cast originated in a couple of stage plays, Garth Marenghi's Fright Knight and Garth Marenghi's Netherhead, performed at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in 2000 and 2001 respectively. The fact that it was Edinburgh makes things ten times better.
• Awesome Music:
  • The theme song, and "One Track Lover". The former is effectively a Cliché Storm of early eighties theme tunes and the latter is both hilariously catchy and done as an in-universe music video by Todd Rivers, complete with a side of A Wild Rapper Appears! by Dean.
  • The chase theme from "The Apes of Wrath". It's an absolutely classic chase theme that's tacked onto a hilariously awful chase.
• Better on DVD: The sheer amount of bonus mock interviews, plus the in-character commentary, gives a much better experience than watching the show on its own.
• Crosses the Line Twice:
  • During "Scotch Mist" Dagless tries to make amends with the Scottish people he offended years ago by explaining he didn't like being in Glasgow, but as he apologises he comes off as even more bigoted. And even though the Scottish people talk in plain English, the show adds subtitles to their lines as if they were speaking incomprehensible gibberish.
  • The eyeball monster raping a man with a giant pixelated penis, and impregnating him.
  • Renwick exploding? Horrifying. His head surviving and having a conversation with Dag about how he thinks he's going to die? Funny. Renwick begging Dag to kill him because he can't finish the job himself, and how "It really hurts?" Very funny. Dag lightly whacking his head (which turns into a dummy) with a shovel that just happens to be in the room? Hilarious. Sanch poking his head through the door and saying "I'll get a mop?" Utterly hysterical. Garth giving a perfectly serious speech on how he has "never exploded," but that he knows what it would be like, followed by a clearly moved Dean waxing lyrical about Garth's writing abilities? Comedy gold. This isn't even the end of it. The joke continues to escalate for the rest of the episode.
• Cult Classic: Invoked in-universe or, at least, presented as one by Marenghi. Appropriately, it has become one itself.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • Matt Berry plays Dr. Sanchez, who at one point thinks about how he wishes he could get the ladies like Dagless (Marenghi's character)—his accent, however, makes it sound like he's saying "Douglas". Funny enough, Douglas actually is the name of one of Matt Berry's later roles.
  • Similarly, Darkplace (In-Universe) is the sort of woefully schlocky TV that one can easily imagine Stephen Toast being a part of — and Berry puts on the sAme aCCeNt for both Todd and Toast.
  • In one of the DVD extras, Dean Learner, played by Richard Ayoade, laments how many great shows are gone, one being The Crystal Maze. Not only has that show been revived, but Richard now hosts it!
  • The show could easily be taken as a parody of Kingdom Hospital, given that they share the premise of a haunted hospital, plus Stephen King obviously being one of the inspirations for Marenghi, but the two shows aired almost simultaneously. In fact, Darkplace debuted a few weeks before Kingdom Hospital (though it's probably more a case of both shows being a riff on Riget, with Kingdom Hospital as a sanctioned remake and Darkplace as a satire).
  • One of Sanchez's first lines is telling Liz "You're a woman." Matt Berry would later voice a medical bot in Fallout who greets Lucy in the same manner.
• Ho Yay:
  • The friendship between Dag and Sanchez is clearly written this way. Sanchez telling Dag that he won't stand in his way of being best buddies with Renwick again feels like he's telling a lover that he's okay with them getting back with an ex.
  • Dean Learner has a Stalker without a Crush like obsession with Garth Marenghi, though this definitely seems one sided.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • "I know writers who use subtext and they're all cowards."
  • "You're acting like an ape! A WILD APE!"
  • "He's right Sanch, one of the main reasons I went into medicine was for the laughs. That and the pussy. And that dried up ten year ago if you'll pardon the expression."
  • "You and he were... buddies, weren't you?" "Buuuut if you and he wish to be best buddies again, I won't stand in your waAAyyY."
  • "Look at the size of that thing's rod!"
  • Plus actor. This one has actually caused a series of edit wars on Matthew Holness' Wikipedia page.
• Nightmare Fuel: It may be because of its somewhat fake feel, but some of the content of the series manages to be genuinely terrifying in spite of its intentional hokiness.
  • Dagless's occultist partner Renwick spontaneously exploding into a gory mess may take you off-guard, though the situation quickly becomes hilarious when Renwick's still-animate head begs Dag to put him out of his misery.
  • One particular standout is Liz's black hollow ghost-eyes in the first episode. They are the only part of the entire series not to suffer from Special Effects Failure, and are fairly shocking as a result. Dagless gives some genuine advice about not doing that in the ward.
  • Some shots of Liz levitating in the climax of "Hell Hath Fury" are legitimately quite disturbing.
  • Ironically, many of the interviews with Dean Learner are more frightening than anything written by Garth, since Dean is all but stated to be a paedophilic serial killer.
• Retroactive Recognition: Paul King, director of Paddington (2014) and Paddington 2, appears in "Scotch Mist" as one of the techies mentioned by Dean to have been poisoned by the mist used for the titular effect.
• Spiritual Successor:
  • Man to Man with Dean Learner, a chat show using many of the same characters. Also, Snuff Box, which starred Matt Berry, had Alice Lowe in a cameo (as David Bowie, of all people), and had Dean Learner show up a few times.
  • The short film "A Gun For George", written/directed by and starring Matthew Holness, is a much Darker and Edgier take on the "conceited hack writer creates idealized Author Avatar" concept.
  • Darkplace itself bears something of a resemblance to the Gelliant Gutfright sketches from A Bit of Fry and Laurie such as "The Red Hat of Pat Ferrick".
  • The Spoils of Babylon, the Transatlantic Equivalent that's also about a Vanity Project TV series made by a narcissistic author, has actors playing actors playing characters and takes a similar Stylistic Suck approach.
  • Internationally, Childrens Hospital could be considered one. A tropey Show Within a Show with a cast interview framing device that's So Bad, It's Good out-of-universe...and both take place in a hospital, even!
• Vindicated by History: The original run of the show was poorly advertised and placed in a terrible timeslot, and so the show had terrible ratings and was swiftly cancelled. Years later, it's considered an absolute classic and enjoys an international audience well beyond that of many more supposedly successful shows of its era.
• Wangst: Much hay is made about Dagless being a 'brilliant yet troubled doctor'. Given the nature of the show and the quality of the writing, this usually translates to angsty, over-the-top brooding about ill-defined and ludicrous things.
• The Woobie: Madeleine Wool, Liz's in-universe actor, thanks to the extremely misogynistic script, where she plays a stereotypical, hysterical, ditzy Menstrual Menace, despite having ostensibly been to "Harvard College, Yale." Madeleine herself is "missing, presumed dead, with the presumption heavily on dead." It's implied Dean Learner killed her.

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