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Undisputed Horror Legend Garth Marenghi Is Making His Grand Comeback With TerrorTome

Matthew Holness in Garth Marenghi's Darkplace Channel 4 Television Corporation
By Eric Vespe/

Garth Marenghi fans rejoice! The good author is back at it with a newly announced hardcover, ebook and audiobook release titled "Garth Marenghi's Terrortime." I can sense some of you are politely nodding your heads and shining a "I'm happy that you're happy" smile and otherwise have no idea what I'm talking about. To you good people, I humbly request you seek out the early aughts bit of British weirdness that goes by the name of "Garth Marenghi's Darkplace."

Marenghi is a fictional horror writer (think a really, really, reeeaaaalllllyyy dumb Stephen King) played by Matthew Holness whose books are so popular that he's given his own TV show with total creative freedom. Of course he directs and stars despite not having any experience at either and the resulting show is so bad that it never found and audience and was thought lost to time. In the early 2000s, Garth salvages the 20-year-old footage and finally gives it the release it deserves.

This is all fictional, of course, and the resulting show is a hilarious spoof of horror TV, soap operas and uniquely British oddball humor. This is the show that introduced me to Richard Ayoade ("The IT Crowd") and Matt Berry ("What We Do In The Shadows").

Author, dreamweaver, visionary ... plus actor...

Matthew Holness and Matt Berry in Garth Marenghi's Darkplace Channel 4 Television Corporation

We thought that we had seen the last of Garth Marenghi, but the fictional author made a surprise appearance via publisher Hodder & Stoughton's Twitter account, to announce a brand new book called "Garth Marenghi's TerrorTome" which is a real book written by Holness in Marenghi's distinct egotistical voice that will be published November 10, 2022.

The plot sounds about as bonkers as you'd expect from the crazed mind that brought you "Darkplace." 

"When horror writer Nick Steen gets sucked into a cursed typewriter by the terrifying Type-Face, Dark Lord of the Prolix, the hellish visions inside his head are unleashed for real. Forced to fight his escaping imagination – now leaking out of his own brain – Nick must defend the town of Stalkford from his own fictional horrors, including avascular-necrosis-obsessed serial killer Nelson Strain and Nick's dreaded throppleganger, the Dark Third."

Holness returning to this character is out of left field and very exciting for us die hard fans of "Darkplace." Holness has given us some good stuff since putting Garth Marenghi to rest, like the bizarre horror movie "Possum," but you better believe I'll be pre-ordering this book. Heck, I might even spring for the audiobook, especially if Garth Marenghi is the one narrating it.

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