Garth Marenghi's Darkplace

Each episode comes with a DVD commentary track, featuring Marenghi, Learner and their co-star Todd Rivers (Matt Berry). What you get out of these likely depends on how far you buy into the premise of the series and its mythos. As more of the same, they are entertaining and provide a lot of added value.

But personally, I would have preferred it if Holness and Ayoade had dropped the meta-fiction for a moment and talked as themselves about their ideas and inspirations, to get a better handle on whether they have a genuine appreciation for their subject matter or are just privileged young Cambridge Footlights veterans mocking and exploiting popular forms.

The disk also includes Darkplace: Illuminatum and Misc. Horrificat Illuminata, together providing another hour or so of interviews; In Memoriam Darkplace, a gallery of production stills; storyboard to screen comparisons; radio spots; a cut scene from The Scotch Mist episode (1 minute 35 seconds); home movies shot by Garth's wife on the set (4:15); test footage from the pilot episode (1.52) and the single released by Dean Rivers and series composer Stig Baasvik. In other words, a lot of extras that take you behind the scenes of the fake series, but again not the real one.

There is also what looks to be an easter egg in the form of Garth and Pam's home movies, though I couldn't figure out how to access it.

Image and sound quality are fine and more than adequate to the deliberately lo-fi nature of the series, as connoted through the chapter menu where a stack of videotapes bearing the names of the episodes; even if all six would have fitted on a 180 minute tape back in the day...