• We have updated the guidelines regarding posting political content: please see the stickied thread on Website Issues.

The Garth Marenghi Appreciation Thread

Zeke Newbold

Carbon based biped.
Joined
Apr 18, 2015
Messages
1,249
I first caught the beginnings of this series when it was a touring stage show called `Fright Night` on at a small arts theatre in Leicester. I could connect with it. but only a bit later when it became a TV show - `Garth Marenghi's Dark place` - did it become something I really loved - and have since considered to be one of my all time favourite comedies.

I will say upfront that it is something of an in-joke. To really get it it does help if you:

(A) Are a child of Eighties and early Nineties culture, (B) a fan of horror paperbacks, especially including the dross element and (C) you know about about the writer Shaun Hutson. I think the reason many people didn't - and don't - `get` Marenghi is because none of the above applies to them.

So be it. The Office was an in-joke for those who worked in offices. As this did not include me, I never really laughed at that show myself either.

For those of you who don't know the series, suffice to say that it was something of a skit on Shaun Hutson (or at least his kind of writing and corresponding persona).and, on top of that, on a whole array of television tropes and presentation styles - particularly from the Eighties and early Nineties. It was a dry black comedy combining satire, social commentary and farce. (I'll post a link or two beow to lift a few veils).

It seems that - more lately - Richard Aoyade seems to have become something of a celeb in the UK (while I've been away), but the other actors remain quite obscure. That's good - as if all the actors had become well known the show would lose its freshness.

Favourite line? Doctor Lucian Sanchez saying to Marenghi: `My aunty lives in Scotland. She says it's quite nice` (An exercise in bathos - as Marenghi has just delivered a blood-and-thunder monologue on the horrors of Scottish life). I guess you had to be there....



 
I'm a fan too. Shame they didn't do more, but I suspect the number of viewers was quite small.
I also liked 'Man to Man With Dean Learner', which featured the same characters.
 
Last edited:
Matt Berry is also doing alright for himself, as well as multiple voice overs he has recently starred in 'what we do in the shadows' and the brilliant 'Year of the Rabbit' which i highly recommend if you havent seen it.

Matthew Charles Berry (born 2 May 1974) is an English actor, voice actor, comedian, writer, and musician. He has appeared in comedy series such as The IT Crowd, Garth Marenghi's Darkplace, The Mighty Boosh, Snuff Box, and also co-created and starred in the Channel 4 sitcom Toast of London, for which he won the 2015 BAFTA Award for Best Male Performance in a Comedy Programme.[1] More recently, he has starred in the FX television series What We Do In the Shadows since 2019.
 
Alice Lowe does very well, too, as a performer, writer and director. In fact, the only person who didn't seem to benefit was Garth himself, Matthew Holness.
 
Garth Marenghi Is Back With ‘TerrorTome’ Novel
Here’s the official blurb: “When horror writer Nick Steen gets sucked into a cursed typewriter by the terrifying Type-Face, Dark Lord of the Prolix, the hellish visions inside his head are unleashed for real. Forced to fight his escaping imagination - now leaking out of his own brain - Nick must defend the town of Stalkford from his own fictional horrors, including avascular-necrosis-obsessed serial killer Nelson Strain and Nick’s dreaded throppleganger, the Dark Third. Can he and Roz, his frequently incorrect female editor, hunt down these incarnate denizens of Nick’s rampaging imaginata before they destroy Stalkford, outer Stalkford and possibly slightly further? From the twisted genius of horror master Garth Marenghi – Frighternerman, Darkscribe, Doomsage (plus Man-Shee) – come three dark tales from his long-lost multi-volume epic: TerrorTome. Can a brain leak? (Yes, it can)”
https://www.empireonline.com/tv/news/garth-marenghi-is-back-terrortome-novel/

 
Back
Top