MacDuff, Dirk and Susan (Darren Boyd, Stephen Mangan, Helen Baxendale)
It’s been a really long time since I least read Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency by Douglas Adams. Long enough to struggle to remember what happened in it, and certainly long enough to know that I was probably too young to understand quite a lot of the jokes at the time. So when adverts started hitting my screen for a TV adaptation I was genuinely quite pleased at the prospect. It fell rather nicely into my ideal window for watching TV adaptations of famous books: No one can complain “Well, you’ve never read the book,” because I have, but I’m also not so attached to it that I can pre-empt every event before it happens and the places where it varies from the text really don’t bother me that much.
Which is probably a good thing because you couldn’t mistake this adaptation for being anything at all like the original book. It’s a weird half-way dramatisation that presents an interesting dilemma in some respects. I think by now almost everybody knows that all the various versions of The Hitch Hiker’s Guide To The Galaxy are different, and purposefully so. It’s one of those things Douglas Adams was notorious for. In that regard, the fact that this dramatisation, simply entitled Dirk Gently, differs from the book does keep it in the spirit of that drive for constant reinvention. So the idea that it’s been bumped forward twenty years to bring it into the modern day does not bother me. It’s almost entirely irrelevant, in fact. The biggest problem with Dirk Gently, is that it’s not actually a dramatisation of Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency at all. It’s a dramatisation of one tiny aspect of the novel (the missing cat) and that’s kind of it.
There’s no argument that it is an immensely complicated book, with a whole raft of plot-lines about Coleridge and Kubla Khan, aliens, electric monks and brain-bending slabs of time travel. It’s one of the things that makes adapting it for screen so incredibly hard. What instantly becomes obvious though is that absolutely none of this is included. In fact the only reference to it is a scribbled note about Kubla Khan on Dirk’s wall that he paints over before starting on the case about the cat.
In some ways, I absolutely understand that to fit this into the format of a one-hour TV drama, enormous sweeping cuts had to be made. As such, it is an entertaining, if somewhat perfunctory, piece of TV. If it was not called Dirk Gently, I would have enjoyed it as a bit of slightly silly comedy-drama-sci-fi and thought no more on the matter. The performances are good for what they are, you can’t go far wrong with Stephen Mangan and Darren Boyd (both veterans of C4 comedy Green Wing) and in places it is genuinely very funny. But if you’re going to watch it then I can only advise that you enjoy it for what it is, and entirely ignore the fact that it has anything to do with Douglas Adams. Because taken on its own it’s an entertaining one-off but it’s definitely not what it pretends to be on the surface.
Stephen Mangan as Dirk Gently
The one thing I do not understand though, is why try and cram it into an hour long TV special in the first place? It would have benefited enormously from more time, both to expand on the plot and develop the characters. Because there are a great deal of references to the novel peppered through the program, Dirk’s fridge and the make of his car for example, but they are things that are never explained to casual viewers. It relies quite heavily on assuming the viewer has a knowledge of the book rather than actually fleshing out the characters, and it’s people who do know the book who are going to be most annoyed by the brevity and simplification of this film.
I think if I was watching it without a clue as to the nature of the people already I would have mostly been slightly bemused by the whole affair. The fact that Dirk owns a British Leyland Princess is a long-running set-up in the novel (Like the Austin Allegro it is more aerodynamic going backwards than is it going forwards, a fact which eventually becomes relevant) but which seems almost entirely arbitrary when included in this adaptation because this point never gets mentioned and never comes up. It’s the difference between “Dirk owns a crap car” and “Dirk owns a crap car because thanks to the fundamental interconnectedness of things the crapness of his car will eventually become important.” Due to the format there just isn’t time for these subtleties to be conveyed and while I’m sure the writer (Howard Overman, Misfits) thought their inclusion would be a nice nod to lovers of the book, on the most part they just serve to remind us of all the intricate levels of detail that had to be left out.
I’ve read elsewhere that Dirk Gently was initially created as a pilot and if that is the case then perhaps the peculiar brevity is pardonable under the promise of a more richly detailed full series. But as it stands, Dirk Gently feels like it’s barely even an abbreviated dramatisation of the synopsis on the back of the book jacket.
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Lady T
Lady T is a great lover of British TV, which is helpful as that's mostly what she gets to watch. She strongly believes that tea can't be made using a microwave, that children's programming really was better when she was a kid, and that there's nothing in the world that can't be solved with a liberal application of common sense. She very much enjoys reading but like most of the rest of the world would some day like to write a book herself. If she ever succeeds in doing so there's a pretty good chance she'll never shut up about it. She can be contacted at lady_t_220 @ yahoo.co.uk.
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You say it was intended as a pilot… Do we know that that is now not that? Other internet mentions continue to refer to it as a pilot and I really want to see the electric monk riding a horse!
I’ve seen it referred to as a pilot on other sites, but the BBC page itself doesn’t say anything about it at all. The BBC Press Office referrs to it as a 1x60min drama and in the schedule announcement it’s listed as an hour-long drama.
I can’t offhand find an offical announcement stating whether it really was comissioned as a pilot or not. There’s a lot of blog chatter but as I haven’t followed production from the outset I have no idea where the original information came from and therefore have no idea how accurate it is.
I can well believe that it was, an hour is an odd length for a one-off drama of such a substantial book, but it wasn’t advertised as a pilot and isn’t referred to as one anywhere on the most recent press releases.
Probably won’t know for sure either way unless there’s a decision made about comissioning a sequel or series from it.
Th efact that Howard Overman is credited as “creator” in the titles lends credence to the idea that it was intended as a pilot as the Created by… credit tends to be used for series rather than specials.
Of course, it annoys me no end that Overman has the gall to claim he created anything. He didn’t, he adapted it. I’ve noted that this is a recent trend in adaptations and remakes (Survivors was one) with writers claiming they created something that was created by someone else. I don’t care how much you adapt something, you still only adapted it.
Back to the point… Yeah, agree with most of what you wrote. It being an attempt at a series (and I always felt it could make a good one) is the only explanation because it fails as a one-off by leaving fans of the book unsatisfied and everyone else bemused. If they want to adapt the book properly, the BBC should look at how Sky handles its Pratchett adaptations for a lesson in how to do it.
Watched it, loved it, that basically sums me up. It was not to be expected to stick too close to the book or we would still be watching, after all, we probably all know Douglas Adams’ books too well and his love for elaborate storytelling.
No, I definately think they made a good job of it and I do hope there will be a sequel.
I’m with Frank on this just watched and enjoyed it. Theres just too many ideas in the books to expect some faithful re-telling.
There was just enough homage to the character and the original story and hopefully if theres a series we’ll all get to see an electric monk turn up in some form or other!
I might point out that Adams liked some story/character variation in all the formats he authorised for Hitchikers.
I’ve seen too many tv shows and films over the years with directors and screen writers trying to appease die hard fans of the original material, only to fail (watchmen anyone? – faithful but dull!). I think the BBC did a good job with this and a little positivity from fans could see a bit more money thrown at it and a decent series which compliments the books but will never replace them.
A year or two ago BBC Radio 4 produced audio dramas for both Holistic Detective Agency & Long Dark Tea Time of the Soul. You can buy each of these series as CD boxsets (search the BBC shop website or Amazon etc).
They were made by the same team (Dirk Maggs & co) who made the Hitch Hikers radio series 3, 4 & 5 (and if you haven’t already bought those it’s about time you did).
In the radio dramas it’s Harry Enfield playing Dirk Gently (he is excellent too). There are loads of well known voices playing the other key roles.
I enjoyed this one hour (hopefully pilot) episode – but there is so much more yet to be explored.
I must agree with those who look forard to more than a pilot.
The characters were well played and I would like to see them develop with the fridge in a zaney plot based on the Adams original.
I agree with this blog. If this production is not a pilot episode for an ongoing series then it’s pointless. It’s a good bit of telly but as an ardant Douglas Adams fan I am somewhat disappointed at the sheer volume of stuff that has been jettisoned to get this on screen, including much of the central character!
I also get annoyed when I hear people saying that the books are “unfilmable”. This is absolute nonsense. I know the books inside-out – every scene – and there is not a single detail that could not be made with a sufficiently imaginative and sensitive director. Were I given the job of adapting either of these novels for the small screen I would be unlikely to feel the need to delete any of the scenes written.
I would love to co-script and executive produce a Dirk Gently serial for TV!
I would turn it into a fully-fleshed dramatisation as the BBC did with the Chronicles of Narnia and Box of Delights back in the eighties, though the directorial style would be more like the recent Sherlock. One would probably be forced to tweak the structure or emphasis a little to work as an episodic format (as Peter Jackson did with Lord of the Rings) but materially it could ALL be done and done faithfully. But it couldn’t be done on a tiny budget. My adaptation would be on a par with half a series of Doctor Who.
Actually… I could do it on a budget, but it would look more like Neverwhere than Sherlock. Not too bad really, but nobody would be that impressed. Would be nice to chuck the money at it and have it stand up alongside Sherlock, Doctor Who, Life on Mars etc in the pantheon of new classics. This is a great time for TV, we are very spoiled.
- agree with blog – apart from (like most of replies) – I can’t believe it isn’t intended as a pilot. My comic milestones are ISIRTA, Monty P. & H2G2. Dirk Gently was a wonderful successor, all too sadly never to be fully realised. I see no reason to doubt why this couldn’t make a brilliant (if brief) series – but a shame they haven’t tried to capture the real (way out) feel of the books.
To Mr. Db – thanks to CGI, I agree that few books are now ‘unfilmable’ – witness Lord of the Rings. However, I’m very uneasy about the approach taken with Discworld – the films seem too long and slow for all but addicts – would have been better in serial form (and possibly running from one book to another) – but here’s to TP anyway!.
I read the Dirk Gently books as a teenager and loved them. What amazes me is that nobody has mentioned that this “adaptation” just wasn’t funny. I remember crying with laughter at the books. I wasn’t expecting it to live up to that, but I didn’t laugh once. It looked good, Mangan is perfect for the role, but the script was dreadful.