Douglas Adams can't have been such hot property for a few years now, but his virtual 60th birthday has virtually coincided with a bit of a media explosion - or maybe that should be the other way around? Anyway, there was his party at Hammersmith, Gareth Roberts' excellent novelisation of Adams' unfinished 1979 Doctor Who story Shada, and then there was BBC4's Dirk Gently series...
I loved the pilot when that was shown as a one-off some time back now, but I recall being unsure that it would work as a series. Gently is, at the root, a highly annoying character for all his brilliance. But then so is Sherlock Holmes. I was also concerned that the interconnectedness of everything may very quickly become both predictable and very trying to an audience.
I am loath to draw too many comparisons with Holmes, but just as many viewers and / or readers would get frustrated and annoyed with Sherlock without Watson to filter and dilute him (either in the Classic period or the modern day Moffat incarnation), so Howard Overman keeps Richard MacDuff from the original novel and the pilot and has him hang around as a slightly more likeable side-kick. Ping! We have an amusing and quirky 'hero' and an ordinary guy to get him out of trouble and say all the stupid things to Dirk that we'd like to say as the audience. Now I've made him sound like Doctor Who!
Fans of the Dirk Gently books, like me, will have enjoyed spotting the occasional references to either or both novels in the TV series. But really that's where the similarity ends. Adams created and birthed this character, but Overman has made him TV-friendly.These episodes have all been intelligent, witty, funny (there is a difference between those last two) and engaging pieces of television. At an hour they are the right length. They're well-made, well performed and competently directed without falling into the snappy editing trap of accidentally looking like BBC1's Sherlock - which even the last series of Doctor Who did at times, tut tut.
Stephen Mangan is spot-on casting for Dirk - perhaps even inspired - and is wonderfully eccentric. I enjoyed Harry Enfield's Gently on the radio, but he wouldn't have been as subtle and watchable as Mangan on TV so I'm glad they didn't think to transpose that casting. The radio, TV and book Gently's are all very different men, yet at the same time the same man.
I'm not 100% sold on Darren Boyd (who seems to be flavour of the month on TV these days - ads, sitcoms, Python dramas) as partner / assistant MacDuff, but he gives a solid enough performance. I'm also fed up with seeing Jason Watkins on TV at the moment. He makes an acceptable Gilks, and it's a change not to see him camping it up, but I do think 'Oh God, not him again' when I see him in stuff, which I'm assuming isn't the audience reaction either him or the production team are after.
If it returns for a second series I'd like to see them make more of receptionist Janice - I always found her hilarious in the books. I'd watch another series anyway - but first I want to buy a knackered old Austin Princess...
No comments:
Post a Comment