It can be entertaining, in a poignant sort of way–or possibly poignant, in an entertaining sort of way–to think about all the wonderfully impossible stories the world will never get to read because of Douglas Adams’ untimely death in 2001. But at least we can take some solace and no small amount of amusement from the fact that his works continue to live on. Not only is his The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy series considered a modern classic, but now even his less well-known but still brilliant Dirk Gently series is getting some well-deserved attention.
Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency and The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul take place on Earth, but still have (more than) sufficient weirdness and humor to make good complements to the Hitchhiker’s series. BBC America has announced that, on the heels of IDW’s new Dirk Gently comic book, they will be producing a TV series adaptation of the books.
(The depiction of Gently from the comic books bears a striking resemblance to the Tenth Doctor from Doctor Who, which inspires me to picture David Tennant playing the detective, which would be amazing. Everyone should tweet to BBC America suggesting they sign him right away.)
The adaptation is to be scripted by Max Landis, best known for writing the 2012 film Chronicle. No announcement has been made yet as to when the new series will premiere, or even begin filming. Let’s hope, as Gently might say, that they can “grapple with the ineffable itself, and see if [they] may not eff it after all.”
And in doing some research for this article, I found out there was a four-episode series based on the Dirk Gently books in 2010-2012, which I will now have to watch on Amazon Instant Video. Excuse me for a few hours.
While reading this I was getting ready to point out the 2012 series… but you got to it in the end. It flopped… and that was with UK audiences who actually understand the humour. Unless they do an American makeover on this new version (which would be a travesty and would ruin it), I can’t see it scoring the kinds of runs it will need to score to survive.
There was an audio drama version done back in like, ’07 I think. Perfection. I highly recommend.