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Hmm. That is all that I had to say after watching Dirk Gently, BBC4’s new adaptation of Douglas Adams’ popular books. Having not read the books, I was unsure what to expect from Thursday’s pilot episode (how American is British TV becoming?) and, even after having watched it, I’m still not entirely sure.
The premise is pretty straightforward. Dirk Gently (Stephen Mangan) is a holistic detective, which, as he explains, is a detective who believes in “the interconnectedness of all things”. At the start of the episode, he is employed by Ruth (the ever-wonderful Doreen Mantle) to find her missing cat Henry. It is unclear at first as to whether he is a con man or just eccentric, but it soon becomes clear that he is a bit of both. During the episode he is reunited with two of his old university friends (Darren Boyd and Helen Baxendale), and believes that the explosion of a warehouse on their estate and the disappearance of a local millionaire are related to the cat’s disappearance. Writing that makes it seem even more ridiculous than it was when I was watching it. Usually, though, when a plot is that ludicrous, the programme is a delight to watch… Dirk Gently somehow managed to fail at this.
First, let’s look at the positives. Mangan gives a spirited turn as the title character and, while the character isn’t always likeable, he is engaging enough to make the programme watchable. There were also a couple of amusing sequences, and the ending had a pleasing sci-fi twist, and the final reveal had something very Jonathan Creek about it.
However, that rather sorry looking paragraph is where the positives end. The pace was slower than a snail on sleeping pills, the special effects would have been considered poor in 1970s episodes of Doctor Who, and the first half of the episode was as eventful as an all night rave with Patrick Moore and David Attenborough. Having said that, there were some ‘good bits’, but the quality of the episode fluctuated very wildly, as if the writer had thought of 15 minutes worth of good scenes and then padded them out with 45 minutes of boredom. Also, while some of the jokes were quite good, the majority were signposted better than London on the M1.
Boyd and Baxendale didn’t add much either, as both were rather bland; they weren’t helped by their underdeveloped characters, paling in comparison to Mangan and Mantle, who were clearly having great fun. Unfortunately, despite their best efforts, that fun struggled to rub off on the audience, as it never felt like we were being involved, with perhaps only fans of the books being able to fully make the most of it.
All in all, Dirk Gently made for a rather mediocre watch, and if there are plans to make a series, then the problems need to be ironed out with a very very heavy iron.
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