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Garth Marenghi's Darkplace Screens at Metrograph Theater on Oct 27th

Garth Marenghi's Darkplace, the cult British sitcom, is getting a rare US theatrical screening at Metrograph in NYC on Sunday, October 27th

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Garth Marenghi's Darkplace, the smash hit one-season British sitcom from comedic masterminds Richard Ayoade and Matthew Holness, screening in its entirety in a rare US theatrical screening on October 27 at Metrograph In Theater in Downtown New York City. Holness and Ayoade's screamingly funny spoof of self-aggrandizing "visionary" horror writers, produced for Channel 4, features Holness as monstrously conceited fictional author Marenghi and Ayoade as his toadying publisher/publicist, reflecting back from the distance of years on the "suppressed" low-budget television series they produced in the 1980s—a deliciously, deliberately incompetent show-within-a-show concerned with the Lovecraftian misadventures of Dr. Rick Dagless, M.D. (Holness) and administrator Thornton Reed (Ayoade) at Darkplace Hospital. See the entire six-episode run of the series made to "change the evolutionary course of Man over a series of half-hour episodes," and enter the Darkplace. The series has enjoyed an enduring cult following to this day.

Garth Marenghi's Darkplace Screens at Metrograph Theater on Oct 27
Key graphic: Channel 4

Garth Marenghi's Darkplace ran for only one season on Channel 4 in the UK in 2004, adapted from Holness and Aoyade's spoof stage show Garth Marenghi's Fright Knight. "Garth Marenghi" (Holness), the self-declared hero of his own books and TV series, is a piss-take of certain British horror authors who thrived in the 1970s and 1980s who wrote clunky potboilers that were bestsellers which gave them massively inflated notions of their own greatness and importance. Marenghi was frequently sexist, racist, homophobic, and paranoid, and it's on full display in Garth Marenghi's Darkplace. One thing no one can accuse him of is self-awareness, though he believes he is the most self-aware bestselling author in the world.

His very dodgy publisher, Dean Lerner (Aoyade), is his foil who sucks up to him and enables him because he's a money maker, and how could he resist being offered a co-starring role in Marenghi's self-produced TV series Darkplace? It was also a spoof of cheesy SciFi and supernatural procedural TV shows that peppered British and US TV in the 1970s. Episodes of the series are interspersed with interviews with Marenghi, Lerner, and cast members talking about how the show was ahead of its time, but mostly of Marenghi reminding the world what a genius he is. "Subtext is for wimps!" he masterfully declared. The series also featured Matt Berry in one of his first starring roles.

Garth Marenghi's Darkplace is screening on October 27 at Metrograph In Theater. This is your chance to luxuriate in the theatrical glory in time for Halloween!

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Adi TantimedhAbout Adi Tantimedh

Adi Tantimedh is a filmmaker, screenwriter and novelist. He wrote radio plays for the BBC Radio, “JLA: Age of Wonder” for DC Comics, “Blackshirt” for Moonstone Books, and “La Muse” for Big Head Press. Most recently, he wrote “Her Nightly Embrace”, “Her Beautiful Monster” and “Her Fugitive Heart”, a trilogy of novels featuring a British-Indian private eye published by Atria Books, a division Simon & Schuster.
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