Customer Reviews

Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, the Complete Radio Series

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Douglas Adams's 'The Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy' exists in so many different media by this stage that it can be hard for the newbie to know which version to tackle first. If you've only ever seen the movie you may think that it's all a bit overrated and you'd be right to do so, as although the film looked great and had some fine performances, the story was a mess. If you've only read the books, you're missing out. If you've only seen the TV series and you liked it, you're in for a treat. The original radio series is not only the best way to do Hitch-Hiker but certainly the best thing its author ever did.

The original radio series was written and broadcast in 1978, with a second series a couple of years later. These suffered, perhaps, from Adams's habits as a writer (he was a compulsive rewriter and could never finish things) and the BBC's habits as a producer. At the end of writing the first series, Adams wound it all up very conclusively because he assumed that a second series wouldn't be commissioned. However, a second series was commissioned, and he had to go through some incredibly tortuous writing to get the story going again. At the end of the second series, he left it deliberately open-ended because he assumed that the BBC would immediately commission a third series, but they didn't. So the original radio series has the effect of coming to a natural end halfway through, then grinding back into motion again and finishing in a rather unsatisfying way. For all that, the first two series are the real gold: brilliantly witty, astonishingly inventive and full of unforgettable moments. These are the reason why Hitch-Hiker fans tend to be obsessive. Adams's best jokes stick in your mind and change the way you see the world: a restaurant at the end of the universe; a starship powered by the fact that it's infinitely improbable that you could pass through every point in the universe simultaneously; a coffee machine that tries to second-guess what you really want to drink by reading your mind; lifts that know what floor to pick you up from before you've decided to go there; a permanently depressed robot...

The cast was great. Simon Jones, an old college friend of Adams, was endearingly bewildered as Arthur Dent, the Earthman who is whisked away from our planet seconds before it's demolished (one of the underlying and most elusive moods of Hitch-Hiker is a pervasive melancholy about the pointless destruction of things; the show starts with Arthur's house being demolished, then his whole planet is blown up, and by the end of the first series the final destruction of the universe has become something that people watch while they have dinner). Geoffrey McGivern is his manic alien friend Ford Prefect; Mark Wing-Davey is Ford's ever-so-cool cousin Zaphod Beeblebrox; the great British character actor Richard Vernon is wonderfully deadpan as a gloomy planet designer named Slartibartfast. One of the best performances is one of the least conspicuous; Peter Jones as the voice of The Book, or the Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy itself, providing useful bits of connecting narrative and helpful nuggets of information about the baffling variety of stuff in the galaxy. (One of my favourite jokes is a Book aside about a form of currency which consists mostly of giant triangular rubber coins several thousand miles along each side: you can't exchange them for any other currency because the banks refuse to deal in 'fiddling small change'.) The Book works as a character because he makes you think that somebody out there knows exactly what's going on, and Peter Jones's marvellously reassuring voice helps a lot in that respect, although the story goes that while Jones liked playing the Book he found the whole thing rather confusing, so it's part of the mystery of acting that he sounds so authoritative.

In 1992 the BBC talked to Adams about a third series based on the third Hitch-Hiker novel, but nothing came of it. He was too busy with other things and they weren't interested enough. After his tragically early death in 2001 the BBC finally pulled its corporate finger out and producer/writer Dirk Maggs was commissioned to adapt the last three Hitch-Hiker novels as three separate series. He managed to secure most of the original cast, although Peter Jones and Richard Vernon were among those who had passed away since the second series more than twenty years earlier. (Their replacements, respectively William Franklyn and Richard Griffiths, were exemplars of the established Hitch-Hiker tradition of hiring veteran character actors to play roles that need natural authority. One of Maggs's good jokes is the initial transition between Peter Jones's voice and William Franklyn's, which is done as if the Guide had a new voice system which is still in beta mode.)

It has to be said that series 3, 4 and 5 are not as great as the first two. They suffer from being based on Adams's later Hitch-Hiker novels which lack some of the sparkle of the earlier ones - although even Adams's lesser books are still better than a lot of other attempts at comedy science fiction. It doesn't help that Maggs is, I think, a bit over-reverential towards his source material, but then a lot of the most vocal Hitch-Hiker fans are very much of the don't-change-a-syllable school and they probably think he butchered the books. But some of Maggs's attempts to preserve Adams's writing are at the expense of characterisation: for example, at one point in the third book, it is mentioned in passing that Slartibartfast had planned to spend his retirement learning to play the 'Octaventral Heebiephone', but that this was a 'pleasantly futile task since he had the wrong number of mouths'. Maggs saves this joke but gives it to Slartibartfast himself, who remarks at one point in series 3 that 'I planned to learn to play the Octaventral Heebiephone, a pleasantly futile task since I have the wrong number of mouths'. In context this isn't as funny, not only because it seems to be an overly detached way for a character to talk about himself, but also because Slartibartfast makes this remark at a moment of great stress and high action, and the remark yanks you out of the moment.

One benefit of having the later books dramatised is that the performers got to stretch themselves a bit. In the original series, Simon Jones as Arthur spends most of his time (as Jones himself once put it) 'whingeing his way around the universe looking for a cup of tea', but in the later series Arthur has to go partly mad, learn to fly, fall in love, lose his love and discover all sorts of things about himself that weren't there the first time round, in the course of which we get to hear what a fine actor Simon Jones really is. Martin Freeman in the movie was a more 21st century Arthur, less Oxbridge and more normal bloke, and none the worse for that. But since there probably won't be another movie, Freeman may never get another chance, and in the meantime Simon Jones has made the character his own.

Some of the best jokes are in the later series, such as the sparkling aside about a spaceship powered by bad news (which I won't spoil because it gets funnier as it goes on). But Adams admitted that the last book, in particular, was written during a fairly bleak time in his life and it feels like it. Dirk Maggs comes into his own here, rewriting and restructuring things so that the radio series has a more open-ended and optimistic finale than the books, in accordance with Adams's own stated intention of writing another Hitch-Hiker book someday.

Nevertheless, it gets darker and more pessimistic as it goes on. In the beginning, Adams's targets - insofar as such a basically cheerful writer had any - were bureaucracy and computers. He changed his mind about computers after buying his first Apple Mac, but his distrust of bureaucracy, which he dramatised as the pathologically petty and cruel Vogons, grew into full-blown contempt by the end of the saga. Other writers who've had a go at the Hitch-Hiker universe haven't quite captured this: the Vogons in the radio series are an unstoppable force for evil, whereas in the movie they're bumbling idiots who clock off from doing bad things whenever it happens to be lunchtime. When Eoin Colfer was recently commissioned with the blessing of the Adams estate to write a new Hitch-Hiker novel, he did a generally fine job but he included a nice Vogon, which is arguably missing the point. On the other hand, it does suggest that Vogons, like every other species in the universe, evolve, which Adams (a great mate of Richard Dawkins) would probably have liked.

As one early reviewer noted, Adams is not great at plots. The most purely pleasurable bits of Hitch-Hiker are the digressions, the halts, the asides, and not so much the story. The story in series 3, adapted from the third novel 'Life, the Universe and Everything', is in fact an adaptation of an unproduced Doctor Who script that Adams had written years earlier, and it shows: if you look hard at Trillian during her encounter with the Krikkitmen, you can see the Doctor's attitude and verbal style showing through.

Still, the technical achievement of all the teams that made the various series is amazing. The late Geoffrey Perkins produced the original radio series and he and his crew did an incredible job on a very tight budget, all without the benefit of things like digital audio which we now take for granted. Dirk Maggs has the same kind of loony inventiveness, and in a nice nod to his predecessor he gave Perkins a funny cameo as Arthur's boss in series 4. And Maggs gets some fabulous performances out of his own semi-regular rep company, such as Rupert Degas as a terminally cool galactic judge. Toby Longworth plays several roles but is drop-dead hilarious as Wowbagger, a bloody-minded immortal being who never wanted to be immortal and who takes his revenge on the universe by insulting every single living creature in it...in alphabetical order.

There are many versions of Hitch-Hiker on audio. There are the original broadcasts. These were cut slightly on rebroadcasting, usually for legal reasons, and it's the cut versions that were released on BBC cassette in the 90s. There's the slightly abridged Original Records version, which was completely re-recorded with most of the same cast because in those days the BBC didn't sell audio of its own productions: this is long out of print and was never released on CD because the record company folded, but if you look very hard you might be able to find it on the internet in some format or another. The Original Records version has fans of its own, of whom I am one; apart from having different and arguably more subtle performances, it also has witty and beautiful incidental music by the late Tim Souster, yet another member of the H2G2 family who died too young.

I don't think you can say you like Hitch-Hiker if you've never listened to this. It may or may not be the most satisfying version of the whole story. Series 4 is probably an improvement on the rather skimpy novel it was adapted from. The finale of series 5 is definitely an improvement on Adams's original ending. The whole thing is one of the most remarkable radio productions ever made, a stunning widescreen movie for your ears and one of the funniest stories about loneliness ever written. Once you start listening, you may never be the same again.

This CD box set contains all the radio episodes (the older ones plus the more recently produced episodes), as well as some bonus materials.

I was in heaven for many hours during a long car trip!

I was very pleasantly surprised.

I expected the 2 radio plays, but not only did it have them on 3 CDs each @ 2 episodes per CD, it also has a 3 CD radio dramatisation of Life, The Universe and Everything, a 2 CD dramatisation each of Mostly Harmless and So Long, and Thanks for all the Fish, and a final disc containing Kaleidoscope and Six Characters in Search of an Answer: Arthur Dent. These being a behind the scenes look at the first 2 radio series and Douglas Adams talking about the genesis of the radio series; Simon Jones on being asked to take on the role of Arthur and Geoffrey Perkins on the struggles with the BBC to get them broadcast in the first place.

I will be brief, as others have reviewed this in more depth.

Suffice to say that this is a truly hilarious, memorable, delightful, groundbreaking, poignant (and so on until we finally run out of superlatives) work.

I am perhaps unique amongst reviewers here, as I did not hear the original on radio, due to the minor inconvenience of not yet being born... However, the series is as fantastic as others have suggested, and as wonderful as my father remembers when it was broadcast in his day. Indeed, it is only when listening to it that one realises how much of popular culture is based on Adams' work, and how timeless the humour is.

I cannot recommend it enough.

I first heard HHGTTG on it's 2nd airing on the radio - I then carefully taped all 12 episodes, thoroughly decorated the inner sleeves of the cassette tape boxes, bought the double album with the warm and friendly words "Don't Panic" on the cover and listened to the epic again and again. It was brilliant! Radio comedy drama at it's best! The TV series was good but limited - still watched it religously though. I bought most of Douglas's books and thoroughly enjoyed them as well. The Hollywood film was also good but, of course, different again. This collection brings it all back and then some! Pity the packaging couldn't include some of the cover art of the original BBC album but Hey! That's Cool!
If you have any kind of properly developed funny bone, get this collection and embrace it! And if life ever starts to really puzzle you, the answer is 42.

I first listened to the primary phase of The Guide when I was about 12. Fantastic! Even at that age I could appreciate most of the humour. After that I listened to the secondary phase, read the books, and more recently the new lot of radio series. They are all superb. The humour (both subtle and obvious) is unrelenting, the theme music is a classic, the sound effects superb, and the actors brilliantly portray their characters.
Arthur Dent's journey through space (still wearing his dressing gown) has become a modern classic, and is likely to remain so for a very long time. If you ask me, the new film is an insult to a brilliant, and sometimes very meaningfull, work of science fiction.
And by the way, the answer to LTUAE really IS 42!

I bought this for my daughter two or three years ago and felt that almost fifty quid was a lot to pay for a set of CDs but that she deserved to enjoy the wonders which I had been lucky enough to hear when they were first broadcast and I was a delighted teenage listener over twenty five years ago.

I wasn't disappointed and neither was my daughter. She's 12 now and has done her best to wear out the whole set of disks. She listens to them over and over again despite being able to quote massive chunks of the series verbatum.

It has to be one of the best forty odd quid I've ever spent. It is hilarious but it is also brain food of the highest order. Comedy has rarely been so intelligent and mentally stimulating.

Buy it; enjoy it; inflict it on other people and, finally, offer up some sort of prayer of thanks to the great and much missed Douglas Adams.

The whole Douglas Adams masterpeice in the original format. This is how THHTTG was meant to be experienced. Excellbt well recomended

The series is extraordinary but I have had two boxes now, each of which has had at least one track that will not play. It might be because they are trying to fit too much onto a disc (it was the last track of a disc in each case that would not play) but I'm still mid-problem.

Otherwise, it's a great achievement.

No problem with delivery even though it's quite a large package for CD's.
Brilliant series! Excellent price for the amount of hours of fun you get from it.
All round good! =D