I've just finished watching the second, and probably final series of Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency on Netflix. As a Douglas Adams fan I was interested to see what they had done with his character. He was actually working on a third book when he died, but this isn't based on that. It's hard to describe as just about everything that happens is out of the ordinary. Dirk calls himself a 'holistic detective' who solves 'the whole crime' claims that everything is connected.
The first series introduces a set of characters around a mystery involving time travel, soul transference and a corgi. A lot of it is pretty violent with bizarre deaths from the start. As in the books a series of apparently unrelated events and people turn out to be part of something big. It's confusing at times, but it rewards persistence, in my opinion. I really enjoyed it. The star name involved is Elijah Wood. I didn't really know anyone else.
The second series continues the story with a lot of the same characters, but moves location and there's a magical fairyland involved. You really just have to go with it. The violence continues as before with plenty of blood and some really nasty characters, including British actor John Hannah.
Some fantasy takes itself too seriously, but this is just fun, despite the death toll.
I was a bit sceptical of moving the stories to the US, but it worked out pretty well. Samuel Barnett in the title role was new to me, but I thought he played it well. Dirk needs to be extremely eccentric, but likeable. I can imagine Adams coming up with something like this. His plots are so varied that you didn't know what to expect. Time travel, aliens and even gods would often crop up.
This is by no means the first production to be based on the stories. The BBC did a series with Stephen Mangan in 2010, but there were only four episodes. It's a long time since I've seen it.
There were also radio productions of the two complete novels starring Harry Enfield. Harry is more as I imagined Dirk from the books than the other two. The radio series were produced by Dirk Maggs who Adams wanted to adapt his books. He's also worked on the radio series for the later Hitchhiker books. I really need to catch up with the latest radio series based on And Another Thing....
Douglas Adams is one of my favourite authors and it's such a shame that he died when he was younger than I am now. I'm sure he had lots more plans. He didn't even get to see the movie of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy get completed. That's an odd thing in itself as it is different to the book, radio series, TV series, stage play... He didn't seem mind changing his stories over time and that's quite reasonable. I'm sure he just kept on having new ideas.
I like books that are interesting or funny. Douglas Adams achieved both of these.
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