Dirk Gently

With their genesis in a, then, abandoned Tom Baker era, Doctor Who script - 'Shada' whose filming was stopped due to a production strike although it has since been novelised and adapted for audio - Douglas Adams wrote two and a bit Dirk Gently books that have since been spun off into two TV series, as 'Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency' for BBC America in 2016 with Samuel Barnett and Elijah Wood, but before that, between 2010 and 2012, as 'Dirk Gently' for BBC4.

Adapted by 'Misfits' creator Howard Overman, with later scripts by Doctor Who alumni Matt Jones and Jamie Mathieson and starring Stephen Mangan as Dirk, Darren Boyd as Richard MacDuff, Helen Baxendale as Richard's exasperated girlfriend Susan Harrison, Jason Watkins as D.I. Gilks and Lisa Jackson as Dirk's perpetually unpaid secretary Janice.

The original pilot episode aired in December 2010 and is the one, of the 4 episodes made, which most closely relates to the first novel with it's tale of time travel but the others, shown in 2012, all maintain the science fiction elements that perfectly suit a detective whose investigative style is based on quantum physics and the fundamental interconnectedness of all things.  The now ubiquitous Mangan, who was then mostly known for his starring role in the hospital based sitcom 'Green Wing', brings the perfect amount of manic untrustworthiness and crazed genius to the role whilst Boyd is the consumate everyman foil as Dirk's "averagely incompetent assistant" / partner. 

Whilst there is a slightly cheap and cheerful aspect to the show, particularly when viewed against 'Sherlock', that was airing to global acclaim around the same time, it's charm is it's own and, had it been given the chance, feels like it could have grown into something lasting but, unfortunately the show was cancelled following it's sole series with the BBC blaming a funding freeze and a decision to consolidate it's original drama production to it's two principal channels.

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The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Audiobook

May 25th 
Happy Towel Day.

"More importantly, a towel has immense psychological value. For some reason, if a strag (strag: non-hitch hiker) discovers that a hitchhiker has his towel with him, he will automatically assume that he is also in possession of a toothbrush, face flannel, soap, tin of biscuits, flask, compass, map, ball of string, gnat spray, wet weather gear, space suit etc., etc. Furthermore, the strag will then happily lend the hitch hiker any of these or a dozen other items that the hitch hiker might accidentally have "lost." What the strag will think is that any man who can hitch the length and breadth of the galaxy, rough it, slum it, struggle against terrible odds, win through, and still knows where his towel is, is clearly a man to be reckoned with."

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Omnibus: Life, The Universe and Douglas Adams

How many works of fiction can you name that are equally as famous as a book, radio play and TV show although not so much as a movie?  I can name one, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy which I've featured here on Wyrd Britain a few times but today I thought it about time we stopped and turned the spotlight on it's creator, Douglas Adams.

Made just a few months after his death in May 2001 this episode of the BBC arts show Omnibus is a celebration of Adams' life and work.  With contributions from a wide variety of his friends and colleagues such as Terry Jones, Stephen Fry, Richard Dawkins and many more it is an affectionate homage to the man and his ideas.



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The Making of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Way, way back in a time almost lost to history and now known only as Monday the 5th of January 1981 the BBC screened the first episode of the TV adaptation of the book adaptation of the radio show adaptation of the thoughts of a bloke called Douglas.

Douglas was a clever man and like all the best types of clever men he knew that some clever things were also funny things and so set about making a funny thing out of the clever things.  In order to do this he drafted in some other clever people.  Some who were clever at organising, some who were clever at drawing, some who were clever at filming or recording or building or musicing or pretending to be someone else.

Then, 10 years later, someone else who was clever had a clever idea to take all the extra bits that the clever people had filmed, film some new bits of some of those self-same clever people and get the main clever pretending man to talk about how clever everyone was.  They even had the idea to put two different spaceships at the beginning to make less clever people who really like watching clever people at work go "Yay!" like the big geeky kid that he is they are.

The Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy Radio Show live

I first happened across 'The Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy' via the magnificence of the TV show.  Radio was never a big part of my life growing up so the original radio play had passed me by and the lack of a bookshop anywhere near where I grew up meant the book had gone unnoticed also.  So, the TV show was a revelation. A glorious, madly funny, revelation.

I managed to track down the first two books a little while later but the radio show eluded me for years.  By the time I did get to finally hear it so entrenched was I with the TV version that it took some effort to get my head around those characters that has been recast from this original version.

One of those was the voice of Trillian. Played by Susan Sheridan who was for me a jarring change from the very distinctive Sandra Dickinson version that I'd grown up with.  Another was the Geoffrey McGivern version of Ford Prefect as opposed to the David Dixon one. The radio show is, of course, fabulous and all the cast are perfectly at home in the roles and that initial "Oh, it's a different actor" aside I soon grew to love it.

So it's with sadness that I noticed this weekend the passing of Ms. Sheridan and so, with my condolences to her family and friends, I thought this would be a good opportunity to share with you, not the original show because it's not online, but the casts triumphant return to the roles with the 2014 live show.

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

First there was the radio series, then came the books and then in 1981 the BBC television people finally realised that they really should get in on this intergalactic guidebook lark and turn it into a series. 

For the most part they kept to the cast of the earlier radio play although both Ford Prefect (David Dixon for Geoffrey McGivern) and Trillion (Sandra Dickinson for Susan Sheridan) were recast.

It tells, as I'm sure you know, the story of Arthur Dent (Simon Jones) who, on the day the local council decide to demolish his house in order to build a bypass, discovers that not only is his friend Ford an alien from a small planet somewhere in the vicinity of Betelgeuse but that the Earth is also about to be destroyed in order to make way for a hyperspace bypass.

Instead of the little lie down he thinks he needs, Arthur finds himself rescued from the doomed Earth and catapaulted across space and time.  Along the way he discovers the importance of towels, visits numerous planets and meets a whole host of people of various sizes, shapes, colours and configurations including a very nice girl that he had previously failed to get off with, the ex-Galactic President; the two headed, three armed hedonistic semi-cousin of Ford's called Zaphod Beeblebrox (Mark Wing-Davey), Marvin, a clinically depressed robot (Stephen Moore), a man with an unimportant name who designs fjords (Richard Vernon), the manifestations of a race of hyperintelligent pan-dimensional beings on an aeon long search for the Ultimate Question about life, the universe and everything and the officious and deeply unpleasant Vogons; all of which he does with a fish that disproves the existence of God in his ear.

To help him better understand where he's ended up Ford gives Arthur a copy of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy an electronic and somewhat eccentric book (voiced by Peter Jones) which, via little animated entries, provides him with snippets of information about the galaxy.

I was a bit too young to catch the radio play so this series was my first exposure to the glory that is Hitchhiker's and it's still my favourite of them all.  From the cast and the acting, through the animation and Paddy Kingsland's incidental music to the wonderful and inventive script, I love it all.

Buy it here - The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy Special Edition [DVD] [2018] - or watch it below













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Doctor Who: Shada

Douglas Adams & Gareth Roberts

BBC Books

Inside this book is another book - the strangest, most important and most dangerous book in the entire universe.
"The Worshipful and Ancient Law of Gallifrey" is one of the Artefacts, dating from dark days of Rassilon. It wields enormous power, and it must not be allowed to fall into the wrong hands.
Skagra - who believes he should be God and permits himself only two smiles per day - most definitely has the wrong hands.
Beware Skagra. Beware the Sphere. Beware Shada.

Back in 1979/80 a strike at the BBC meant that the Douglas Adams penned Doctor Who story, Shada, never got completed.  A few scenes were shot but after the stoppage the team decided not to go back and finish it.  a small scene from it was used to cover Tom Baker's refusal to appear in the 5 Doctors and in 1992 it was released in a truly dreadful version with linking commentary from Baker.  Both BIg Finish and Ian Levine have made versions - audio (featuring the 8th Doctor) and animated - but both are really rather poor.

This one however is rather fantastic.  This is Gareth Roberts, a Who regular, novelising Adams' script for the episode, much of which Adams reworked into the first Dirk Gently novel.

Here Professor Chronotis is a retired Time Lord at the end of his regenerations who has opted to spend the remainder of his existence surrounded by his books in the anonymity of Cambridge academia.  Into this idyllic dotage comes the Doctor and Romana, answering a distress call that Chronotis doesn't remember sending, and also Skagra, a petulant young man with designs on godhood for which he needs one of Chronotis' books which will allow him access to the Time Lord prison of Shada and the key to success in his plan.

It is a rollicking good read.  Funny and pacey and typically Adams.  Kudos to Roberts as he kept himself as quiet as possible, which can't have been easy.  There's a joke in Gallifreyan and a frankly horrendous (and wonderful) Latin pun so tremendous that whoever thought of it ought to be both pilloried for it and fed cakes by the nubiles of their choice.

I absolutely loved this book.

Buy it here -  Doctor Who: Shada