Musical Montage: Dr. Lucien Sanchez “One Track Lover”
Up there with Danger 5 and The Spoils of… as far as parody TV shows go, Garth Merenghi’s Darkplace was an absolutely brilliant and hilarious takedown of 80s style sci-fi and horror created by, and starring, Richard Ayoade and Matthew Holness along with the always incredible Matt Berry. The series was presented as an 80s horror miniseries that was filmed but never released until it’s debut in 2004 and featured Holness as the horror author Garth Marenghi, who created the series and also co-starred in it as Dr. Richard Dagless and it was set at the Darkplace Hospital, a medical facility built literally on the gates of Hell. Ayoade played Marenghi’s publicist Dean Lerner who is also playing the character Thornton Reed, Berry is playing actor Todd Rivers who is playing Dr. Lucien Sanchez and Alice Lowe is playing Madelaine Wool who is playing Liz Asher. The show was constantly shifting styles and also featured behind the scenes interviews filmed after the show was finished and, in the sixth episode, there was the incredible cutaway to “One Track Lover”, an 80s synth jam from Dr. Lucien Sanchez, who plays it on the radio to add just another ridiculous level of meta-ness to the proceedings. There’s killer guitar solos and a rap solo from Ayoade and it’s just one amazing part of a hilarious and brilliant whole. Check out the sequence below.
