Late Show: Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace

A Channel 4 comedy series, released in 2004, that lampoons 1980s television drama, particularly horror, sci-fi, and “the rampant egotism of self-appointed Mastermind authors.” The show presents Darkplace as though it were a real, low-budget television series, produced in the 1980s, and now getting its first screening; this hoax is the basis of the show’s fictional frame. Darkplace’s fictional show-within-a-show includes deliberately poor production and special effects, sub-par acting, and storylines that are “severely flawed and open-ended,” interspersed with “present-day interviews” with the cast.