Darkplace

[davidn]

I swear that they just got quadralien as a stand-in to do this scene.

I honestly didn't think I would like Darkplace as much as I did, but I've been laughing at it for the whole week now - it was only brought to my attention because of the main character's astounding resemblance to quadralien. Sometimes, stranded out here in England's substandard "New" edition and relying on the Bittorrent sites for imports, things like this pass me by until years later - although I hear that it also passed most people by in Britain as well, when it was first shown.

The series was made in 2004, but is presented as a lost programme from the 80s being shown for the first time, with interviews from its cast - therefore three layers of acting are involved and it gets fairly confusing to describe. The central character is Matthew Holness as Garth Merenghi, a complete wally of an author who fancies himself as a sort of horror/action hero and who in turn plays an overly tough-acting loose cannon doctor called Rick Dagless. In the opening episode it's explained that he used to have an interest in the occult and managed to open a portal to hell in the canteen of Darkplace Hospital - a name that was asking for it if ever there was one - and it's been haunted by Twilight Zone-like strange goings-on going on ever since. He's joined by Lucien Sanchez (Todd Rivers (Matt Berry)) and the hospital's director Thornton Reed (Dean Learner (Richard Ayoade)), who were both also in The IT Crowd, and together they fight the otherworldly invasions with the various firearms that they carry for no adequately explained reason.

And it's about as good as it sounds from all that, which is to say it's terrible. Great attention has been paid to make it look like a low-budget series rescued from the 80s, such as the inclusion of the old Channel 4 logo, the slightly grainy quality of the film and tape used, the hair, the twitch in the soundtrack as scenes change as if it had been edited together by physically cutting and pasting tape, and the overwrought cheesy lines like "I wouldn't say I buy this occult stuff - I'm just window shopping, and right now there's a half-price sale on weird". People will lose their lip-sync and be overdubbed with the wrong voices regularly, gravestones will flap in the wind in a distinctly polystyrene-like fashion, and coffee cups in people's hands will suddenly become spades two seconds into a scene. The situation isn't helped by the little interview sections revealing such editing decisions as "We used a lot of slow-motion because we found that some episodes were running up to eight minutes short".

But even though it's so admirably dreadful, part of me really wants this to have been real - perhaps also because the whole idea of a hospital taking a break from routine colonoscopies and heroically battling the forces of darkness reminds me more than a bit of Trauma Center. It honestly makes me feel nostalgic for when I used to watch daft stuff like this and think it was as excellent as Garth Merenghi does. Just look at the introduction - in particular, the render of the hospital looks like the kind of thing that would have been seriously done then without realizing how badly it would age. The Simply3D look of it makes me miss Bad Influence (or make me feel like I'm about to watch a Helloween video, one of the two). The extent to which these people got the 80s action programme mood right is demonstrated about two seconds into the introduction after that, and I still can't stop smiling at how perfectly they did the classic unnecessary explosion-jump.

Oh, and Wheatley's in it too.

Comments

[ethelfleda.livejournal.com]

Couldn't deal with it because of motion sickness, which is a pity as I think I'd otherwise like it :)

[davidn]

Because of the handheld camera? It's strange, I never even noticed until I went back to check and looked at the edges of the screen - my brain just... cancels out the wobble.

[kibet.livejournal.com]

I think Richard Ayoade's character was my favourite with his timing (hitting fist off the table). I think I only saw it a couple of years ago so came late to it too.

[davidn]

He really is great (even though he said that he's not pretending and that his acting really is that bad!) - the whole thing manages to hit a balance where the timing is just off badly enough to be believable. And he keeps on coming out with Homestar Runnerisms like "I beg your pudding?", which seem to fit even though I've no idea why they're there.

[kibet.livejournal.com]

I saw Graham Norton the other night there and they showed a clip of Bad Teacher with someone saying 'shut the front door' and that got them saying other sayings that now I can't remember. I remember being amused though, although I never got into the whole Homestar Runner thing.

[tamakun.livejournal.com]

We just had the chance to take a look at the first couple of episodes interrupted, and well, I feel this show is terrible, but I can't tell if I personally think it's terrible or the way they meant the script to be terrible. I figure, it's only 6 episodes, we may as well see all the shows just to say we've seen it.

On the other hand though, there are plenty of horrible edits that makes the production-teamster in me laugh out loud. Ayoade's single glances at the camera followed by a jump-cut are my favorites.