Saturday, 30 September 2017

Garth Marenghi's Darkplace - A Forgotten Classic

Garth Marenghi's Darkplace is available on demand for anyone willing to sign up to Channel 4. It's free! Rewatching these shows made me regret that there are so few of them, but accept that it's not easy to do horror comedy that's at once so entertaining and so knowing. If you don't know Darkplace, here's Marenghi himself, plus his all-star cast.



Matthew Holness, Matt Berry, Alice Lowe, and Richard Ayoade are rather brilliant. The guest stars are also great fun, especially Julian Barratt and Noel Fielding. Each episode of Darkplace is dotted with cast interviews, in which the fascinating opinions of the creative team are shared. And Darkplace tackles some of the most vital issues of our time. I mean, cop a load of this from .



If this isn't enough to convince you that GMD is worth your while, listen to the author/actor himself read a sample of one of his bestsellers.



Now that's horror.




3 comments:

Aonghus Fallon said...

Was the resemblance to Clive Barker purely coincidental? I could never make up my mind on that score.

valdemar said...

I always thought James Herbert and Guy N. Smith were Garth's progenitors, with a touch of Graham Masterton. Clive Barker was a bit too intellectual and tricksy.

Aonghus Fallon said...

Yeah, I agree - it was more the physical resemblance. Like most really good comedy, Marenghi was just funny, regardless of who or what was the inspiration.

Issue 57 - Winter 2024/5

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