BBC Dirk Gently Adaptation

[Dogmantra]

BBC Four has done a live action drama adaptation of the Dirk Gently books, with relatively large liberties taken, biggest one being that unless I am remembering incredibly wrongly, turned MacDuff into Dirk's partn-assistant rather than a character (but it's not like Adams didn't take liberties between different versions of H2G2 so I was hardly expecting it to be bang on). Stars Stephen Mangan as Dirk who I can never really remember if I like him or hate him. He was quite good in this though. In fact, the whole thing was quite good, didn't leave me tearing my hair out yelling "what have you done?" but it didn't make me laugh out loud more than once (though the fact I was watching it to distract myself from a bad mood probably had something to do with it, I think I would have laughed more often if I was in the right mood).

Anyway, first episode's all that we've got so far (as far as I know, just discovered it on iPlayer, Wikipedia says that there was a pilot in 2010 and two more hour long episodes to come), anyone watched it? What did you think?

[Axolotl]

I saw the pilot way back when it was first shown, I loved it, sure it wasn't a loyal adaptation, but it was funny and largely captured the funny of Adams' books. Mangan is very different from how I envisioned Dirk Gently himself but he has a certain manic quality that makes him fun to watch (also he has the right combination of charm, intelligence and utter lack of concern for others which made the character work).

I don't remember hearing about the series at all after that, I assumed the pilot had bombed and they'd dropped it. If not then I'd better go to iPlayer to check it out.

[Fri]

I've just heard about this, and I can only say **** yeah! Dirk Gently is one of my favourite book, I like it even more than Hitchiker guide. And I don't care if it's not a direct adaptation, it might be even better.

[qbit]

Yes I've seen the pilot, And I really hope it'll get more episodes.
because the one they made was awesome.
the only problem is that there is only one more finished book. So will they write their own plots from scratch? Or will they just make one more episode?

[Fri]

From what I heard, it's pretty much only lightly related with the book. But it'd be hard to adapt the book closely anyway.

[Dogmantra]

Yes I've seen the pilot, And I really hope it'll get more episodes.
because the one they made was awesome.
the only problem is that there is only one more finished book. So will they write their own plots from scratch? Or will they just make one more episode?

According to Wikipedia, there are three episodes in the series, plus the pilot, none of which are adaptations of the books.

[Fri]

Okay, just watched the pilot. Dirk gently looks completely different than he's in the book, yet this is exactly how I imagined he looks like before he's visually described (or before I actually paid attention on how he's actually described).

It's the anti sherlock, and I absolutely love it. And it's barely related with the book, and I also love it for it. I mean, a close adaptation would be fun, but new stories about him would be great too, and in my opinion they captured the spirit well.

The funny thing is, this is exactly what Sherlock fans would absolutely hate if it's a Sherlock adaptation. An adaptation that's in the name only with barely any conection with the book to attract the unwashed masses? Oh my.

And yeah, I do agree that the choosing of dirk's actor and the reason of why they gave him a sidekick is to spoof sherlock.

[shadow_archmagi]

I seem to recall that Adams himself always tried to do lots of new things with each adaption, because just reformatting a book would be boring, and contrary to the point- His books were all about surreal, surprising humor, so doing the same thing over and over again would be like mindlessly quoting Monty Python.

[Fri]

Watched the next episode. I'm still in favor of this. This is exactly why I loved the book so much, to see how everything is actually really interconnected at the end.

What kinda slightly disappointed me now is that... do you think Dirk is shown to be more antisocially jerkass instead of a conman in this first episode? I always thought that he's more of a conman in the book. I'm not sure myself whether it's true or I'm just trying to find things to nitpick.

[qbit]

Watched the next episode. I'm still in favor of this. This is exactly why I loved the book so much, to see how everything is actually really interconnected at the end.
I actually got the opposite impression, the only connection between events are that that Dirk keeps insisting that they are. And that in the end the mystery solves itself.

Or am I missing connections?




What kinda slightly disappointed me now is that... do you think Dirk is shown to be more antisocially jerkass instead of a conman in this first episode? I always thought that he's more of a conman in the book. I'm not sure myself whether it's true or I'm just trying to find things to nitpick.

I haven't read the book, but no I don't really see him as a conman, just someone that lives in his own world, and doesn't really consider everyone else as real. But the next episode is going to be about a mentor or something like it. So maybe it'll become clear that he doesn't believe any of the things he says.

[Fri]

Well yes. It's complicated, on both account. Are all things are really interconnected, or it's just because he's insisting it does. And if he didn't insist that those things are interconnected, would they really solve themselves? It's never clear even in the books, but there's always a general feeling, aha, these things are actually connected.

And also on whether he's a conman or not, or does he believes on everything that he says or not. He does believe them, in my opinion, except that, well, he also use it to generally take advantage of people. From the books, I'm actually still not sure whether he really believes that he's a detective, or it's just his latest con from his long list of con scheme.

Those are part of the charm of the series or me.

Anyway, that's why I said it slightly disappointed me. Because I kinda get the vibe that dirk is a conman in the book, which is less prevalent in the series. Of course, I guess this really depend on how you see him in the book...

My favourite part of the book was the story of how Dirk got expelled from college.

Mildly spoilerish if you care, but actually not really.
Dirk generally pretends to be a psychic that can know future exam questions in college, but his power only activate when he's fully eaten and slightly drunk for some reason, which obviously makes people make sure that he always got those two conditions.

Except that he said to macduff, I think, that he actually just read past exams and try to figure out what questions would be repeated.

So one day, to prove his power, he wrote what's supposed to be future exam questions, and bury it, to be checked after the actual exam.

Then it turned out that his questions are word-to-word same with the actual questions. He then got expelled for stealing exam questions or cheating.

Is he really a psychic? Is that really just a coincidence? Never explained.

[Fri]

Just watched the next episode. It's not as good as the first two in my opinion. I don't know if it because I watched the first two really excited by the premise, or this episode is really weaker. One thing for sure, it doesn't have as much 'interconnected of everything' at the end compared to the first two.

[Dogmantra]

I agree that it wasn't as good as the first one (I didn't see the pilot and it's not on iPlayer). I also thought that it was quite easy to work out what was going on regarding Jane being MAX which was a bit of a shame compared to the first one. Also felt like there was a lot less substance.