The Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy: The Primary Phase (BBC Audiobooks) [Audiobook] (Audio CD)

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.

Far and away the best Science Fiction Comedy Radio Serial of contemorary times, beating out hot competition from, um, well there must have been something somewhere.

Quite simply it makes me laugh a lot so I consider it a must have. If you've read and enjoyed the books, you may not be aware that this is how it all started. If you're in that category, don't hesitate, buy The Primary Phase.

An absolute classic, and I can't recommend it highly enough. Make sure you buy "The Secondary Phase" as well. It covers episodes 7 - 12, and is just as good.