Dirk Gently [DVD]

When one watches this series, one can't help but think "what might have been", had Douglas Adams survived his heart attack and written more for Dirk Gently. How would he have written current technology into Gently stories? But then you remember that A Spoon Too Short (later renamed A Salmon of Doubt) had been sitting in his notebooks for the best part of a decade before Adams' death, and you are forced to conclude that he might never have gotten around to writing anything at all.

But Adams is no longer with us, so fans of his works will have to make do with other people writing scenarios for the characters. Dirk Maggs set the standard very high with his radio adaptations of the later Hitchiker novels and first two Dirk Gently novels. Garth Jennings made a fine effort with the Hitchiker film, but unfortunately it was not as well received as I think it should have been, flaws such as the Trillian/Arthur/Zaphod love triangle notwithstanding.

And now we have a Dirk Gently television series. I must admit I was sceptical about the casting - Stephen Mangan is a fine comedy performer (as can be heard on Elvenquest), but he can be a bit hit-or-miss (as seen in Confetti). However, he exudes arrogance and confidence, so after a short while you tend to forget that you are watching Stephen and are now witnessing Dirk Gently.

Darren Boyd works well as Richard MacDuff, as stories like this do require a "Watson" style character, if only for exposition purposes. However, I do have a few issues with Richard. First of all, come the end of the second episode of the 2012 series, you start to question why Richard is staying with Dirk. Dirk is abusive to him, constantly belittles him and is down-right nasty at times. And yet Richard remains. It is like a wife remaining with an abusive husband, and in this case the "husband" is the eponymous protagonist.

Another thing that puzzles me is why Richard MacDuff at all? He could so easily have been a new character played by the same actor and nothing would be that different in the way the storylines progressed. I suspect that this is because the writers wanted to stick with the source material as much as possible. And considering that the source material consists of two novels and a few notebooks, they are a trifle limited.

However, they are faithful to the works, and you can excuse a certain amount of Dirk's odd behaviour and treatment of Richard as "rule of funny". And there are a fair few continuity nods to the novels, such as why Dirk was expelled from St Cedd's College, or the existence of the computer software Reason.

But what of the plots themselves? I have to say that the writers have done a good job. You can imagine that Douglas Adams could have written stories like these, knowing his love of modern technology. The characterisation of the principle cast is pretty good.

Secondary cast members, such as Detective Inspector Gilks, do seem to be more of a comic exageration of their original novel counterparts. In the case of DI Gilks, he has moved from serious sarcasm and dislike (but with a hint of respect) of Dirk to serious loathing of him, coupled with shadenfreude at the potential demise of Dirk.

Nevertheless, it is a good series, and it has potential to become great in future series.

I have been a massive Douglas Adams fan for as long as I can remember. And I have always found Dirk Gently to be funnier than the HHGTTG. Probably due to the overexposure of the latter. So I was pleased to see that Dirk was finally making it to the telly after all these years. I watched the pilot a year or two ago and thought it to be a very good representation of the book. Sadly I missed the other episodes but spotted the DVD on Amazon an placed an order.

It arrived yesterday and I have already watched it twice.

If you like the recent BBC Sherlock series then you will find that this follows that format very closely but with more laughs. The acting is excellent and the sets fit perfectly with the stories.

The humour sticks closely to the books. The stories not so much. However, despite the deviation from the original stories in the later episodes I am sure that Douglas Adams would be happy that the humour is pretty much spot on. The writers have managed to capture the important bits and not limit themselves to the two written books. This leaves the possibility open for many more episodes. Yes please!

Following on from 2011's pilot episode from BBC4, the first series of three episodes detailing the adventures of the holistic detective was entertaining, although not as entertaining as it could have been. The problem that many Douglas Adams fans focussed on is that the show had little to do with the books. Apart from mentioning character names and minor plotting points from the two and a quarter completed novels, there's little in the series that actually comes from the novels. I didn't view that as an issue as a BBC4 show doesn't have the budget to tackle the stories properly.

For me the main problem is that the show is unsure what it wants to be, which is sad as it seems obvious that it ought to pitch itself somewhere between Dr Who and Sherlock. Viewers who find Dr Who's fantasy too fantastic can take solace in Gently's grounded fantasy while those who find Sherlock not fantastic enough can enjoy a show that can incorporate science fiction ideas. Two of the four episodes took that approach (the pilot and the middle episode of series 1) and they worked excellently, while the other two were less successful and came over as a very low budget Sherlock featuring ideas that were too whimsical for that series. In fact even the theme tune sounds like something composed and then rejected for Sherlock.

The pilot featured missing cats and time-travel, which was in the spirit of the novels, while the middle episode concerned robots, artificial intelligence, and body-swapping. The resulting stories were exactly what the show should be, namely a comic, science fiction detective series in which the solution to the murder plot involves an element that a reality-based detective series could never use. Sadly the other two stories prove this point as they could have been told in any other detective show as they centred on such disparate elements as hired guns from the Pentagon, nefarious cleaners, horoscopes and stalkers.

Despite that, all the episodes feature good running jokes (along with plenty of actual running when the story needs padding) concerning Dirk's money troubles, his amoral attitude, his downtrodden side-kick, his downtrodden secretary, and his downtrodden office. Better still, the science fiction episodes have better acting with Helen Baxendale appearing as Dirk's sidekick's girlfriend, and in the middle episode there's some genuine character development and emotion with Dirk enjoying a touching love interest.

I hope the show gets commissioned for a second series as these episodes show a lot of promise. But I hope the makers realize that the unique quality the show can provide for the tv detective genre lies with the fantastic and not with the mundane.