The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy: The Complete Radio Series (Hitchhiker's Guide (radio plays)) Audio CD – Audiobook, Box set, CD

The complete set of the original radio series, fantastic, what more could you say!

The complete set, took me back to my teenage years.

Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy: The complete audio CD box set. This beautiful boxed set contains the superb radio show dramatisations of all five Hitch Hiker's Guide books, all very well presented inside a magnetically sealed lift up lid. A great radio comedy SciFi series which perhaps drops a notch with the final three series made after Douglas Adams (and some of the original cast) had died. So there's no Douglas Adams working over-time updating the gags from the final three books for radio, as he did modifying the radio gags for the first & only BBC TV series to suit the visual medium. However John Lloyd, who helped out Douglas Adams with the scripts for the 1978 first series and the 1981 BBC TV season, was also involved in the later radio series and they are certainly of a high standard. As there's 27 years between the first and last season, it's no surprise that many missed the later or earlier seasons when first broadcast, so it's great for fans to get them all together in one package.

Inside there's three triple CD cases, which are the first three radio broadcast seasons; The Primary Phase: 'Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy [first broadcast 1978]', The Secondary Phase: 'The Restaurant at the end of the universe [1980]' and The Tertiary Phase: 'Life, the universe and everything [2004]' - with each Phase having three audio CDs and a neat 6 page booklet. This is followed by the three single CD cases: The Quandary Phase (2 CDs: 'So long, and thanks for all the fish [2005]'), The Quintessential Phase (2 CDs: 'Mostly Harmless [2005]', the final series dramatisation with 40 extra minutes over the broadcast version). Then there's the Bonus Disk (1 CD: interviews with Douglas Adams, the cast & production crew). All of the Hitchhiker episodes, including those completed after Adams's death, are referred to as 'Fits' in homage to Lewis Carroll's short poem 'The Hunting of the Snark: an Agony in Eight Fits'. The total run time of all fourteen audio CDs is 12.3 hours. I ripped the audio CD sets to iTunes, and listen on the iPod Classic or on the PC via an Arcam rPAC and Grado SR125s HiFi headphones.

Be warned though the very funny musical gags [spoilers] in episode 3 of series one (Primary Phase CD-2) have been cut, along with eight other short sequences, from that orginally broadcast for copyright reasons. However Jack Whitman, a software engineer from York, was dismayed as much as me about this and he has the details on how to put the original extra minutes of radio broadcast back into the ripped iTunes CD folder or you can just listen to them as MP3s on your PC/player. See Jack Whitman's Hitchhiker's Guide Restoration Project on-line on how to do that, and to listen to all nine deleted sequences (which I think contain some of the best gags in the entire radio series, particularly the first cut sequence where the crew of the Heart of Gold walk out onto the surface of the planet Magrathea). Not technically too difficult to get the tracks back into iTunes, but non-PC techies might need assistance - you can download these nine 'missing' audio tracks as MP3s from his site (right click over the playing bit and 'save audio as', MP3). It is only a few minutes edited from the entire radio series, but there are some memorable moments in them. Thanks Jack, and Audio Go for producing this well presented complete BBC radio series CD boxed set.

I paid £28.99 for the set, sealed & new, from Amazon reseller The Works, which I thought was really good value. I own all the Hitch Hiker's Guide books (and Terry Jone's loosely related Starship Titanic novel of the 1998 PC game), this radio show audio series, the BBC TV season [1981] and the Hitchhikers Guide film [2005], so I guess I must be a fan - probably as I was at an impressionable age (22) when the first radio series was originally broadcast way back in 1978. I didn't have a TV at that time, just a HiFi, my vinyl LP record collection, and a radio tuner/tape recorder (for the likes of The Hitchhiker's Guide and The Burkiss Way) .

This was a great gift that was joyfully received

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!

Despite the fact I was 13 at the time and supposed to be asleep, I listened to the original radio series of HHGTTG under my pillow using a crystal set I had built myself.
Subsequently I enjoyed the books and TV series (IMHO the film was utter rubbish), although I still think the original radio format is still the best.

Even now many years later, I find myself using some of the phrases and catch lines - had a Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster or visited the Total Perspective Vortex recently?

Following a big hint, I was given this boxed set for Christmas and I have put it all on my ipod so I can listen to it in the car. I actually look forward to traffic jams now!

It is great to hear this material again and this time in better quality. I have previously shown my kids the clip of the TV series including the Sperm Whale and Bowl of Petunias (created from missiles by the infinite improbability drive) and am looking forward to educating them properly in the forthcoming weeks! As the Vogons would say "Resistance is futile"!

Thoroughly recommended.

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

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