Postmodern Comedy - Garth Marenghi's Darkplace

Garth Marenghi's Darkplace was a Channel 4 comedy series made in 2004 and written by Richard Ayoade (best known for his role as Moss in The IT Crowd) and Matthew Holness. It can be seen as Postmodern for a number of reasons:

• It is highly intertextual, as it parodies aspects of 1980's low budget television, for example fashion, special effects and music.


• It creates a state of hyper-reality as the show is filmed in a documentary style, with characters commentating on their role within the show.

Intertextuality:



This clip shows an example of how this show parodies the late-night, low budget shows of the 80's with deliberately bad continuity (the coffee cup turning into a spade) and wooden acting.


Hyper-Reality:

As with promotion for their earlier Perrier Award-winning stage show, Darkplace's creators confounded media by producing promotional material in-character. The official website speaks of Garth Marenghi, and other characters as though they were real people, while making no mention of the real actors. Press releases also contained realistic looking fake back stories for Marenghi and the other characters instead of making any mention of what the real cast have appeared in, and an article by 'Garth Marenghi' appeared in The Telegraph discussing his "groundbreaking television series" in Comic's Corner...Link Here

At the beginning of every episode they use a 'retro' Channel 4 logo from the 80's to further heighten the hyper-real state of the 'show' that they make, within the show itself.

By Rachel and Roisin