That was an excellent one.

The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

I love British comedies and I love spoofs of 80s TV shows. But this seems to be neither a very funny comedy nor a successful parody. I think aesthetically they have the 80s style of a Glen Larson show down pat but that's where the joke ends (and it gets repeated over and over again). I think that satire works best when there is a certain seriousness and earnestness to the writing and the performances, that the characters aren't in on the joke. That doesn't seem like the case here. This just seemed like it was riding on the strength of how weird and wacky the 80s were for TV production and for bad writing and acting. One joke. But the show doesn't go further and becomes just as bad a show or worse than the ones that would have been cancelled in the 80s. I think they could have taken the aesthetic but had tighter, more comedic writing. I like Richard Ayoade and Matt Berry in IT Crowd who are mostly wasted in this show.No this show is not the best comedy since The Office, that award goes to Peep Show which is something I recommend people go and check out. Alternatively The Mighty Boosh or Spaced are miles ahead in creativity and humour.

What I love about British comedies is that they're always looking for something new. They're never content with repeating the same ideas under the guise of new actors and story lines. Garth Marenghi's Darkplace is one of those crazy new ideas. Richard Ayoade and Matthew Holness return to the '80s, look for everything that was bad in that decade's TV shows, for what was in need of a send up, and created this show which spoofs anything from A Team to Night Rider to Miami Vice.Garth Marenghi is a horror writer, a visionary, a dream weaver, or, as he puts it, an imaginer. He's really a mediocre novelist and a worse director and writer. But somehow he manages to get a TV show made with his publisher, Dean Learner, and actors Todd Rivers (the amazing Matt Berry) and Madeleine Wool (Alice Lowe). The show is awful, with corny plots, bad sfx, and a synth-heavy score typical of the time. Garth believes the show was so ahead of its time it could change the world. Unfortunately no channel bought it and Darkplace remained in his basement for nearly twenty years (except for a run in Peru).Decades later a channel decides to air the show. For this Garth adds a few interviews with himself and the crew. Many times they interrupt the action to comment on it. Obviously, these are the finer bits, with the serious way they discuss the show they made, incapable of realizing how poor it is.Alas, they only made six episodes. I can't understand why it didn't gain more popularity. The episodes are short and one will feel hungry for more. For this reason buying the DVD is a good idea. The crew created two extra interviews, each 30 minutes long, which are as amusing as any of the episodes and give a lot of insight into Garth, Dean, Todd and Madeleine's mysterious fate. This is the only DVD I've actually bothered to watch all the extras, they're all amazing and add a lot to the original show.Up there with the modern shows of its kind - The League of Gentlemen and The Mighty Boosh - this mix of humor and horror, of TV and movie spoofs is one of the most original and unforgettable shows made.

This show is brilliant and so clever. On first glance it looks like a cheap spoof but the more you watch it the more details you notice. The film used is authentic 80's quality, there's a million tiny deliberate errors and the whole show is a brilliant stab at horror writers that take themselves way too seriously. There's recognisable bits of many a horror writer in there.The cast is fantastic and nearly every line is memorable and funny. What's really annoying though is that Ch4 did their usual balls up with the show. Because it won't sell overseas (see some of the comments from the colonies on this one) and because it's hard to categorise by dull marketing types the show got next to no advertising and was thrown on at something like 11pm on a Thursday evening. Viewing figures where therefore low and the dull marketing people could nod and feel they were right in not backing it in the first place.Seriously, it deserved a second series on the strength of it's one song alone! In these sad days when tripe like Three Pints of Lager and a Packet of Desperation gets 7/10 on here it's good to see original and very funny comedy, even if it doesn't last long.

I did not seriously believe this would, nor could come to any good. I was right. You cannot seriously think this to be comic genius, surely! Many say 'Ooh, it's right up there with The Office', but that was utter rubbish as well. It's incomprehendable how people can stand comedy made to look like fly-on-the-wall, real-life sound bite, documentary-style reality. On top of that, this particular take on the ever-weakening comedy barrel (too much scraping at the bottom, you see) is based around a fictitious 1980's TV show so purposefully badly made that after five minutes, it just becomes an embarrassment, for all the reasons it doesn't intend to be. Fine, have a spoof, poorly put together, horror/comedy, outlining how poorly funded such television is and having a good laugh in the meantime, but, for the love of Buddha, do not keep inter-cutting it with atrociously acted sound bites from cast and producer telling us tongue-in-cheek how marvellous they thought it was and is. In one respect it is identical to The Office - and any other jape that should only really be told once. I get the joke, it's just not funny.