reviewed by Russel D McLean
Starring: Stephen Mangan, Helen Baxendale, Darren Boyd
Based on the novels by Douglas Adams
First broadcast: BBC4, Thursday 17 December 2010
It’s been a long time since I read Douglas Adams’s Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency (and its insane sequel The Long Dark Teatime of the Soul). But what I do remember is that the first time I read it, I was too young to get what was going on. When I came back to it, I adored it. The books were insane and quite brilliant in an intellectually exciting way that the Hitchhiker’s, for all their energy, could never quite attain. In fact, I think I might even have come to prefer them over Hitchhiker’s just for the sheer breadth of their ideas and the insanity behind so much of their execution.
I was tempted to re-read both before viewing the pilot/one off BBC adaptation, but in the end time and the fact that I believe both books are currently residing at my parent’s place prevented me from doing so. And I’m glad of that fact. Because for all that the adaptation gets right, there is much that feels truncated or removed from my impressions of the novels. Not least the compression of the outright insanity that powered the novel’s action. For example, one of my favourite conceits in the first novel was the electric monk that does all your believing for you (in much the same as a VCR watches TV for you if I remember the gag correctly) which was entirely absent from this adaptation as indeed, for much of the running time, was any kind of insane or theoretical insanity. In fact, for most of its running time, the Beeb gently is a gently eccentric detective series, albeit one that manages to keep your attention. Its only at the end that anything genuinely unusual happens, and then it feels so left field I have to wonder how much of the audience are able to accept it. In fact this is the truly worrying aspect of the adaptation – that given the time slot they had, the creators felt they had to try and ground the show but in doing so left out much of what the source material so utterly unique. As it is we are left with what appears to be a good natured, slick and slightly unusual detective story with a twist at the end that seems fairly obvious if you read a lot of genre fiction.
Much of the good work in the show, of course, can be attributed to Stephen Mangan’s surprisingly engaging turn as Gently. He manages to confuse the viewer as to whether he is a genuinely brilliant but misunderstood man or simply a con artist out to bamboozle everyone. In the end, I think he’s pretty much both of these things and I wonder how much of his own theories he genuinely believes. It’s a great performance, and he is not only genuinely engaging but just odd enough to be believable. In fact, it’s a pity that at times the rest of the cast can’t seem to keep up, but then they are all given parts that serve to highlight Gently rather than genuinely come into their own.
Again this is probably a symptom of the pilot’s major flaw: an hour’s running time is not enough for the sheer breadth of ideas that one needs to pack into the show. In fact, I hope there is a full series coming because based on the strength of this first offering we could be in for something that demands attention if the creators allow themselves to move into the realms of the truly fantastical and unusually thought provoking. An example of the show’s limited time comes at the end of the episode when, out of nowhere, some of that fantastically weird SF that was the hallmark of any Douglas work suddenly comes into play. Without any warning, we are thrown into a world of the fantastic that has barely been foreshadowed such is the amount of time that the show has spent on other issues. It seems unusual and out of place. Yes, I wanted that SF aspect to the series, but not just thrown in randomly as an apparent afterthought. And don’t get me started on the “time machine” set and the appalling “countdown” to self destruct that opens the episode. It feels cheaply out of place, a piece of lazy SF shorthand to get the action going. Then again, maybe that was part of the point. But it certainly feels out of place given the slick and offbeat nature of what follows.
For all its faults, however – many of which are to do with the timeslot allotted and how much information/plot/character had to be squeezed in there – Dirk Gently is an intriguing hour of television that promises much more from its engaging lead and its hints at a world other than that which we expect. That explosion aside, the series looks lovely and has an intriguing sense of uniqueness to both its direction and general feel. I just really hope that if they go to full series, they can use the pilot as a jumping off point for flights of fancy to rival those expected by fans/readers of the source materal. If Dirk Gently doesn’t lead to a full series, however, I’m not sure the pilot will stand the test of time but will be seen as a slightly eccentric, if flawed, diversion. And that’s no bad thing, even if it’s clear that given the space to breathe, Dirk Gently (the series) really could be something much, much more.
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