Garth Marenghi's Darkplace (Season 1)

Garth Marenghi's Darkplace (2004) is a British comedy series you can watch online on iFILM — six episodes built around the conceit of a "lost" 1980s hospital horror show too bad to broadcast.

The fictional horror novelist Garth Marenghi has finally released his suppressed creative output, complete with the original cast providing smug retrospective commentary. Matthew Holness plays both the narcissistic Marenghi and his on-screen alter ego, a physician-warlock-Vietnam-vet fighting the Hellmouth beneath a Romford hospital. Matt Berry, Richard Ayoade, and Alice Lowe fill out the cast. The deliberately wooden acting, awkward dubbing, and period-faithful special effects are entirely the point — the joke is the badness itself.

Writer-star Holness and director Ayoade went on to The IT Crowd and Ayoade's own feature films; Darkplace remains their strangest, tightest work. Stream Garth Marenghi's Darkplace online on iFILM.