Funny / Garth Marenghi's Darkplace

General

• The comically-robotic delivery of Sanchez's lines, almost sounding like a text-to-speech voice.
• Any time Dean Learner's bad acting starts to show, whether through flat delivery or putting down the phone at the wrong time.
• Any of Thornton Reed's rants. Cool it Sanchez, or you'll get a knuckle supper, indeed. Adding to it is the fact that he uses several curse words that would sound intimidating if his acting matched the character. However, the fact that the actor uses a deeper version of Ayoade's Maurice Moss voice makes any would-be tough lines fall so flat to hilariously-awkward effect.
  • To elaborate a bit, Thornton is written by Garth in a way that's clearly supposed to evoke ball-busting, hammy police chiefs in action movies, the sort of role you'd expect to be played by a burly, imposing actor with a deep, commanding voice and lots of charisma... none of which applies to Richard Ayoade. Basically, imagine your typical Samuel L. Jackson movie, but replace Jackson with the nerdiest, scrawniest, most white-bread and non-intimidating person you could possibly find and you've got an idea of what Dean Learner's "depiction of the truth" is like .
• Any of the readings from Garth's novels. The first one from Slicer stands out.
  Garth Marenghi: Something was pouring from his mouth. He examined his sleeve. Blood!? Blood. Crimson copper-smelling blood, his blood. Blood. Blood. Blood. (Checks line)...And bits of sick.
• The various cute sick kids with comically horrible diseases Garth is shown caring for, especially the one who's apparently in the hospital because he's a crack addict.
• The way that the "doctors" act more like cops. What, your doctor doesn't carry a gun into the office when they do your checkup?

Episode 1: "Once Upon a Beginning"

• The first thing that happens in the series is a cat appearing in the hallway. You can see the hands carrying the cat dropping it into the shot, and Madeleine/Liz is standing ready to pet the cat for several seconds before it is dropped into shot. Then there's the dialogue...
  Cat: [telepathically, in Todd Rivers' voice] Just leave!
  Liz: Funny... I think that cat just told me to leave.
• So, what happened between you and this Renwick customerrrrrrrrrrrrrr? (Fascinating Eyebrow)
• Larry Renwick's funeral in "Once Upon a Beginning". Renwick bursts out of his coffin, in spite of the fact that in the previous scene he had exploded, but somehow survived as a disembodied head until Dag granted him a Mercy Kill. Dag pushes Renwick's grieving mother aside, even shooting her in the shoulder, before pumping an unholy number of magnum rounds into Renwick, while Reed supports him with his shotgun, after which he uses a flamethrower to finish the job. To cap it all off, Sanchez simply states "Well, that'll stop him." Not only that, but the footage of Reed and his shotgun is badly edited in, to the point that every time it cuts back to Dag, Reed is standing behind him doing nothing and just has his hands in his pockets.
• You and he were... buddies, weren't you?
• The whole scenario in the first episode when Renwick gets blown up, from his understatement that it really hurts to him somehow being alive after basically exploding, with only his head left intact to Dagless whacking his head with a spade, whereupon it flies away like a golf ball, or an obvious dummy. A DVD extra shows Garth's storyboards for the scene, which look like a secondary school student's homemade comic book.
  • The lead-up to it is pretty hysterical itself:
  Dagless: Larry?
  (Renwick graphically explodes into Ludicrous Gibs, coating the room in gore)
  Dagless: Are you alright?
  • As Thornton gets on Dag's case for his use of the shovel, he's holding it. The script, however, calls for him to crush a paper cup out of anger, so the shovel randomly disappears in one shot and is wordlessly replaced with a cup to crush, after which the shovel is back.
• As the scene at Renwick's funeral ends, Thornton comforts a visibly affected Liz in the background... and as he does so, one can see Dean Learner taking the opportunity to grope Madeline Wool's ass. At the same time, a gravestone nearby can be seen wobbling in the wind.
• "I believe that no living thing, be it human, animal or plant, should be hurt in the making of a TV show. So I personally feel very bad about that cat we killed."

Episode 2: "Hell Hath Fury"

• Sanchez is accosted by a telekinetically levitated iron. He draws his pistol and shoots it. His own weapon suddenly comes to life. Sanch throws the weapon down, stamps on it and draws another pistol with which to shoot the first pistol.
• The Temp in the opening of the second episode has the camera wrongly-placed so that his shoulders are cropped off of the bottom of the shot, leaving only his head and the blank wall in the shot.
• A staff member being menaced by a floating stapler runs away with little sense of urgency, taking breaths in the middle of his flat screaming, even after he finishes a phone call. You can't even call it a run, it's more like a mild jog.
  Dag: I ran the only way I knew how... by putting one foot in front of the other in quick succession.
• "As I rounded the corner, I was muscular and compact, like corned beef."
• The clearly visible wires holding up the telekinetically held up objects in "Hell Hath Fury" are funny enough but become hysterical after Dean's incredibly pretentious excuse for it:
  Dean Learner: An eagle-eyed viewer might be able to see the wires. A pedant might be able to see the wires, but I think if you're looking at the wires, you're ignoring the story. If you go to a puppet show, you can see the wires. But it's about the puppets, it's not about the string. If you go to a Punch and Judy show and you're only watching the wires, you're a freak!^note Punch and Judy is a hand-puppet show, thus there are no wires.
• Stephen Merchant as the chef meets a sticky end: Goddamn sonofabitch. The fact that his typical Motor Mouth tendencies are played for Narm in this case, as if the In-Universe actor just wanted to get his lines out of the way.
  Chef: Sonofabitch.
  • The Chef has to bend his knees to duck under doorways because the set designer apparently didn't account for his height.
  • After chewing out Liz, the Chef turns to walk away, pauses, and then turns back and slaps Liz's tray out of her hands before turning and walking away again.
• The Temp's dying speech, which quickly turns out to just be a skimpy rewrite of the research Garth did to justify the character's accent, resulting in Dag and the Temp spending the latter's final moments on Earth giving a grade-school lesson about Bermuda's relation to the UK.
• Liz's actions in the episode are revealed to be because she was on the rag. And Dag's solution to the whole crisis is to lobotomize her to get her back under control. In case it isn't apparent yet, Garth has some very big problems with women.

Episode 3: "Skipper the Eye-Child"

• Thornton Reed using the term "Defcon 4 situation" to describe a search for an eye-beast that Rick is hiding.
• "Look at that poor man. Not only has he just been screwed by an eye, but he's now giving birth."
• "That thing's a potential killer! Look at these lab results!" [points at piece of paper with "POTENTIAL KILLER" written on it]
• The whole sequence when the eye-child bites Dag's hand when Dag for some reason moves his hand near its mouth, causing him to fling it around in a panic and bash it to death comes off as intentionally awkward, with all the other actors standing around awkwardly glancing around, not even responding to what's going on, as if they're not sure what to make of what's happening.
• Dag naming the eye-child after his dead son, resulting in him having to repeatedly clarify which Skipper he's talking about in an aversion of One-Steve Limit. Than the end of the episode reveals that both character are named after Garth's dog.
• As Dag flees from the hospital staff, Thornton suddenly shouts - in a very poorly dubbed in line - "WATCH OUT HE'S GOT A STICK" to try and explain why Dag gets a stick in the next scene despite not having it before.

Episode 4: "The Apes of Wrath"

• The chase from "The Apes of Wrath" complete with Eighties chase music and engine noises dubbed over in spite of the fact that everyone is riding ordinary bicycles, only to make ordinary bicycle noises during the brief conversations during the 'chase', and then when the chase goes on foot, there's an inexplicable obstacle course (complete with small trampolines) and Dagless tackles the ape into an inexplicable pile of boxes. There's even shots where Dagless is being played by a stunt double who doesn't even try to look like him!
• Despite devolving into an ape, Sanchez is still expected to perform surgery. When he botches one and kills the patient, he storms out of the operating theatre exclaiming "Not my fault! Monkey bastard hands!"
• Dean Learner, upon being asked about the fate of the missing actress Madeline Wool:
  Learner: I reckon she's probably somewhere in the Eastern Bloc. That's my hunch.
  Interviewer: You think she's still alive, then?
  Learner: No, I think she's probably just buried in the Eastern Bloc. If she got a burial.
• The apes' tainting of the water apparently involves their leader pissing in it.
• At the end of the episode, the characters have to give an extremely fast and awkward Infodump to explain what the hell has even been happening, something that was very obviously dubbed in in post.
• The lengthy discussions about all the different types of "Homos" (they're referring to the genus of animals that includes humans).
  "But if we're all basically homos, shouldn't we get along?"

Episode 5: "Scotch Mist"

• When Dag goes out alone to face the Scotch Mist, he is attacked by a set of bagpipes. The pipes latch onto him, steal his trousers and turn his hair ginger.
• The long terrifying rant Dag gives about having to spend a night in Glasgow that led to his hatred of Scots.
  Sanchez: My aunt lives in Scotland. She says it's quite nice.
  Dag: Well she's wrong.
• "I ran like my life depended on it. Which it diiiid."
• The incredibly bad attempts by Garth and Dean to insist that the episode isn't racist towards Scottish people.
• Garth and Sanch stopping dead in the middle of the episode to give an advertising pitch for batteries.
• The hilariously awful sex scene at the start, if it can even be called that, acted out by two extras who very clearly could not give less of a shit. "Let's do it here, I'm really horny."

Episode 6: "The Creeping Moss from the Shores of Shuggoth"

• When Sanchez falls for a clinically ill patient (who's slowly but surely turning into broccoli), Sanchez must have a risky surgery in an attempt to save his... um... old boy, but they won't be able to save his new girlfriend. When they discuss it, Thornton attempts to sympathize with Sanchez with this absolute gem of a quote:
  Sanchez: You have no idea what this feels like, old timer!
  Thornton: I've been there, hombre! When I heard my wife died I could barely finish my lunch! But right now Dag and I are more worried about your downstairs!
• Reed breaking up a fight between Dag and Sanchez by firing a shotgun into the ceiling:
  Reed: Knock it off, you two! This is a hospital!
• When Sanchez's girlfriend succumbs to her broccoli disease and passes away, Rick Dagless hands over the remains not to a coroner or anything like it, but the hospital's kitchen staff so they can be boiled (featuring a cameo by Stephen Merchant again).

---