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Culturegasm: BBC Dirk Gently Show

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  1.  (9281.1)
  2.  (9281.2)
    Great find. I loved the books. Sounds like they're going to mash the two together which is a little worrying.
  3.  (9281.3)
    this looks rather interesting. Will probably give it a whirl when it comes out....
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      CommentAuthornigredo
    • CommentTimeDec 8th 2010
     (9281.4)
    Yeah, read about it recently. Love the books, might give this a miss though.
  5.  (9281.5)
    I need to read the books. Copy I had was falling apart. I will rectify this with my down time.
    • CommentAuthorFlabyo
    • CommentTimeDec 16th 2010
     (9281.6)
    First episode of this is on BBC4 tonight at 9. Been some years since I last read it, looking forward to seeing how much they've kept and what they've had to change to make an adaptation work.
    • CommentAuthorFlabyo
    • CommentTimeDec 16th 2010
     (9281.7)
    And when I say first episode I mean only episode, which is a shame.

    It's not the same plot as the book, with only an hour it was never going to be.

    But it *felt* right, and it was fun. It actually felt more like a pilot episode for a series, and if that's the plan then that would be a most awesome thing indeed.

    Spoilers...

    Clever that they adapted it in such a way that nearly all of the elements that Adams re-used from his unfilmed Doctor Who episode in the book were not used at all in this adaptation. There's a nice nod to it though, with the things that are on Dirk's whiteboard before he clears it being those plot elements that they dropped.

    I know a lot of people were a bit wary of the casting, especially for Dirk, but I think it worked pretty well. Not far off how I'd always pictured Dirk to be to be honest, slightly manic but with a lot going on under the surface. Some nice 'bringing it up to date' touches in the dialog as well.

    Quite liked the soundtrack as well, apart from the East 17 anyway... heh.


    Interested in what other people thought though. I suspect purists will probably hate it, but given that there's never been any adaptation of anything Adams without it having substantial changes (and that includes things he adapted himself, such as taking the Hitchhikers radio series to books and back again), I don't think being a Douglas Adams purist is something you can actually be...
  8.  (9281.8)
    I liked it (and used to run ZZ9, the official H2G2 fan club). Stripping Shada from the tale made sense, but left a bit of a void. As a single thing, not great. But as a pilot - not bad.
  9.  (9281.9)
    Endearingly shambolic. Solid casting choices for Dirk and MacDuff. The theft of the therapist's notes was a glimmer of some strange genius, and I liked the car, but the rest felt pretty subdued.
  10.  (9281.10)
    Interesting. This is the first I'm hearing of it, and I'll have to try and torrent it, since I'm in America, but I will say that the trailer isn't exactly "gripping." I guess I'd expect something funnier, since the books were so hilarious. Also, I suppose I'd think Dirk should be fatter... Very interesting, though.
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      CommentAuthorcurb
    • CommentTimeDec 17th 2010
     (9281.11)
    I enjoyed it, particularly because it diverged so much from the book (as I remember it, anyway) in terms of plot, but hit the tone pretty much dead on. It wasn't hilarious, but I'd quite happily watch a series of these weird, shambolic little tales.
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      CommentAuthorcity creed
    • CommentTimeDec 17th 2010
     (9281.12)
    It was fun and well made (apart from awful CGI) and although I have trouble with Mangan as Dirk, he gives good value anyway. I snickered repeatedly.

    but pretty much everything about this felt grievously wrong for me.

    It was butchery.
    No sister, no sofa, no Wednesday Week, no Anthem, no Reg, no WayForward II
    too many other gaping wounds on the story to count them all out but the disemboweling stroke was:
    No monk.

    A few incidental chalk diagrams and diegetic media mentions are palliative rather than curative. This narrative never stood a chance.


    Maybe losing story bits is too obvious a moan but for me this came off more like a tribute to Dirk Gently than a real go at telling the book's story on the telly. Not that I utterly hated the tribute, but an ungutted adaptation is surely doable.

    Stephen Mangan posted a defence of the show on thursday on a BBC blog
    he says
    In my opinion Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency and The Long Dark Tea-Time Of The Soul are unfilmable as written.
    which is a bit disingenuous. But he also says
    all the stuff from the books that doesn't feature is still sitting there ready for us to use once the BBC commissions a 58-part series...
    which doesn't exactly sound to me as though he's sanguine about the chances of that happening.
    • CommentAuthorFlabyo
    • CommentTimeDec 17th 2010
     (9281.13)
    It definitely feels like the BBC are just testing the waters. They could comfortably get a really good series out of this (and not use any of the original stories at all even, just the characters and premise).
  14.  (9281.14)
    I'd love to see them take bits from Salmon of Doubt and incorporate them into a movie or show. I know it's not a complete book and Adams was thinking of changing it into a Hitchhikers book, anyway, but the premise of Gently discovering money transferred mysteriously into his bank account and then assuming that he had been hired for a case and should just follow random people until something came of it is a great concept...
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      CommentAuthoreDave
    • CommentTimeDec 18th 2010
     (9281.15)
    the book was a mind blower, this tv series is a mildly quirky detective show but not as funny or original as monk or johnathan creek. I saw a programme about the book on telly when it came out which dramatised some scenes and that was way more effective. To make a dirk gently tv series without including the electric monk or the ghost or the space station that wrote bach's music is like doing romeo and juliet without including the concepts of murder, love or inter family rivalry.
    • CommentAuthorradian
    • CommentTimeDec 19th 2010
     (9281.16)
    Having not read the book, I thought this was quite good.
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      CommentAuthorJack_Crow
    • CommentTimeDec 20th 2010
     (9281.17)
    I had no idea of its existance, kudos for letting me know. Now I saw it, would like to see a series.
  18.  (9281.18)
    Does anyone else have a problem with them saying "dr who inspired?" Defiantly NOT how i pictured Dirk.

    I"m afraid of it honestly loving the HELL out of the books. (i'm so gonna get yelled at for this comment:) I honestly liked the Dirk Gently books more than Hitchikers *runs for cover* I adore the starched humor in them and the obscenely round about way you get to the end of the book.

    The audio books i have with Douglas Adams reading are one of my prized possessions. I wonder what he would have had to say about the TV series and who gets the nice check?
    • CommentAuthorFlabyo
    • CommentTimeDec 22nd 2010
     (9281.19)
    It was Doctor Who inspired though, half of the original book was borrowed from unfilmed episodes...

    I agree with you on them being better than Hitchhikers though. I loved Hitch as a teen, but when I re-read them a few years later I found them too silly for my changed sense of humour.
    • CommentAuthor256
    • CommentTimeDec 22nd 2010
     (9281.20)
    It was watchable, and I think the comments above likening it to a pilot are dead on.

    But, to my very hazy recollection, there was actually something quite ... creepy about the books. Maybe it was the Electric Monk or the sort of temporal uncertainty involved, but that seemed to be missing from the TV edition.

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