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Product Description
Product Description
A reissue of the first series of BBC Radio 4's humorous science-fiction drama. The story begins when Arthur Dent, not really your average man-in-the-street, finds that the Earth is suddenly destroyed around him, and the great hitch-hike begins.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
73 of 74 people found the following review helpful
Format:Audio CD
This radio series changed my life. The shocking report of Adams' death at the weekend served only to highlight the debt so many of us owe to the man. He changed our radio listening habits, if nothing else.
The series was broadcast as six half-hour episodes on Radio 4 in the spring of 1978. I missed them entirely, not being a Radio 4 listener at the time. I discovered them during one of my visits to friends at Cambridge that summer, where I was played a tape of a tape of a recording of the episodes from end to end. (There was no audio or video merchandising to speak of then; if you missed the original broadcast, you simply had to wait until the BBC deigned to repeat the transmission.)
The humour was outstanding -- here were hundreds of lines which we could recite back to one another, to replace the Pythonisms that were beginning to pall. Here were some wonderful characters -- the cool but callous Zaphod Beeblebrox, the embarrassed Slarti Blartfast, the unionised philosophers, and the psychologically unbalanced space cops, for example. Besides the affectionate view of science fiction, perhaps what endeared Adams most to the student population was the limitless possibilities presented by Hitchhiker. Ther density of ideas was often amazing. Christianity, for example, gets summed up simply as a man getting nailed to a tree about 2000 years ago for suggesting the wouldn't it be great if everyone were nice to each other for a change. A fearsome battlefleet attacks Earth only to be swallowed by a small dog, due to a terrible mistake over scale.
Geoffrey Perkins, producer of most of the episodes, has said elsewhere that it was only with episodes three and four when he realised quite how magical a thing the Hitchhiker was to be. Suddenly a space romp turns into a philosophical search for the ultimate question with a planet used as an organic computer.
The whole thing is unreservedly brilliant, and deserves at least seven stars. For me, the Hitchhiker is best enjoyed as the radio series -- not as the book, and certainly not as the TV series.
This is Adams' masterpiece. That is the saddest aspect of his life -- that he never regained the pinnacle that he achieved with his first significant creation. The second series, by comparison, is mostly drivel, reflecting an obsession with shoe shops that few had noticed or subsequently cared about.
After many false starts, it seems that Adams had completed the film script for Disney days before he died. We can only hope that it does justice to the Hitchhiker concept. But for me, these radio programmes, and nothing else, are true Hitchhiker.
47 of 49 people found the following review helpful
Format:Audio CD
Two Words. 'Mostly Genius'
I have read, watched, listened, played and laughed to all the different forms of the guide that I can find, And every time it has been a fantastic journey across the Galaxy with Arthur, Ford, Zaphod and Trillian. It has been said before that the radio series is the best and most pure version of the guide, and this I will not dissagree with. If you like Sci-Fi, Comedy, or Breathing, you should love this series.
****** It should be 6 stars!...
I have read, watched, listened, played and laughed to all the different forms of the guide that I can find, And every time it has been a fantastic journey across the Galaxy with Arthur, Ford, Zaphod and Trillian. It has been said before that the radio series is the best and most pure version of the guide, and this I will not dissagree with. If you like Sci-Fi, Comedy, or Breathing, you should love this series.
****** It should be 6 stars!...
12 of 12 people found the following review helpful
Format:Audio CD
This is the true way to experience the Hitchhikers guide. It is perhaps one of the most entertaining and hilarious radio plays of all time. It is wonderful to be able to get hold of the radio plays that I had not managed to hear when they first came out and it gave me a whole new opportunity to fall back in love with Marvin, Arthur and Ford.
In the same way as the books allow the readers imagination to run away with themselves so the radio plays continue to enhance this. For people who do not like reading this is one of the best ways to get into Douglas Adams' classic......and for those that do like reading - well this is like welcoming an old friend home
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Hitch Hiker's Guide To The Galaxy: Primary Phase - Perhaps this is a...
There's no way to review this really. It's such a unique piece of radio that there is no where to begin, and nothing to liken it to! Read more
Published 5 months ago by Victor
Curate's Egg
The Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy: The Primary Phase (BBC Audiobooks)
This is not the original radio series. Read more
This is not the original radio series. Read more
Published 6 months ago by Sci-Fi Simon
Wierd...
good but wierd...i like the surrealness of it (if thats even a word... :P) i love the ideas that doug had to be honest!
Published 8 months ago by Jarvy
Goodbuy and thanks for all the fish
As he become a Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy fan when the radio series was first broadcast decades ago this was the ideal Christmas gift for my partner. Read more
Published 17 months ago by Bentonbag
Demand the original
I am a "Hitchhiker" fan from TV first, then the books, then, finally, the radio series. And I think the original radio series is the best of the lot. Read more
Published 17 months ago by Christopher Twelvetrees
Superb, the definitive version.
I love the Hitch-Hikers books and the TV series but had never heard the radio plays so decided to give this a go.
What can I say, it's brilliant! Read more
What can I say, it's brilliant! Read more
Published 19 months ago by A. Davis
Hitchhikers guide
I love it. . .I am waiting to hear from my Californian grandson. . .
Thankyou very much.
Thankyou very much.
Published on 6 Jan 2010 by We Benson
a whole new generation to enter this mad world
What can I say? What can anyone say except "bravo"...I do have one small quibble which is pretty childish - the cassette tapes that I owned twenty five years ago had one or two... Read more
Published on 5 Dec 2009 by R. Cure
Near Flawless
Fantastic - a true muse of fire, crammed with so many ideas and such comedic brilliance that it is practically bursting at the seams. Read more
Published on 9 July 2008 by Magic Lemur
Almost, but not quite, the original version
As with previous releases on vinyl etc, this is NOT the original radio show. Episodes 1-4 sound like they have been re-recorded, from the voices and the technical sound I'm... Read more
Published on 29 May 2007 by B. P. Gore
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