Douglas Adams

In a comedy based on Douglas Adams's novels, Stephen Mangan stars as detective Dirk Gently, whose investigative technique is based on "an unswerving belief in the fundamental interconnectedness of all things" - even when he's searching for a missing cat. Happily, the switchback script here, by Howard Overman (Misfits), has a kind of pointedly whimsical quality that's pure Adams. Less happily, there are moments when Mangan's kinetic energy overwhelms the rest of the cast. On balance, though, you suspect Gently's notoriously deadline-averse creator would approve. A series please.

Douglas Adams's fictional detective has already been portrayed on Radio 4 in Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency and now in an adaptation by Howard Overman makes an amusingly inventive, if small-scale, transition to TV. Stephen Mangan plays the shambling, penniless sleuth who believes in the "fundamental interconnectedness of things" and possesses an unerring knack of stumbling to the right conclusion. In tonight's case, he is exercised by a lost cat, a missing inventor and an exploding warehouse. Events bring him into contact with two former university friends, the gullible MacDuff (Darren Boyd) and his girlfriend Susan (Helen Baxendale).

Douglas Adams always believed that Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency would make a better film than his more celebrated novel, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - although we can only wonder if the hugely talented, fitfully productive writer, who died in 2001 aged 49, would admire the concision of this one-hour adaptation. They've even lopped three words from the book's title. Running his Holistic Detective Agency, based on "the fundamental interconnectedness of all things", Dirk is broke and hopelessly chaotic. Stephen Mangan (Green Wing) is a spot-on Dirk, ably assisted by Helen Baxendale and Darren Boyd as sidekicks MacDuff and Susan. The plot builds to flights of fantasy from a simple case of a missing cat owned by pensioner Ruth, played by Doreen Mantle. From One Foot in the Grave's Mrs Warboys to Mrs Fishwick currently in Corrie, she's the connoisseur's vague old dear with impeccable comic timing.

Video: Stephen Mangan on playing Dirk Gently

The actor, Stephen Mangan talks to BBC Breakfast about playing the lead role in Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency, adapted from the novel for BBC Four.

Its writer, the late Douglas Adams, always thought that his stories about Dirk Gently, the hapless detective, would make a better film than The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, but found it difficult to get his books adapted at the time.

Dirk Gently review

Gently doesn't do it for this Douglas Adams fan...

Stephen Mangan: "People still yell 'Dan' at me!"

"He physically abused me every day," says Stephen Mangan of recent co-star Matt Le Blanc. "He'd pin me down and fart in my face." We think he's joking. But the lank-haired comic actor has such a scurrilous sense of humour that it's hard to distinguish between a deadpan gag and a world-breaking exclusive.

It's no wonder, then, that he's been chosen to breathe life into Douglas Adams's huckster detective Dirk Gently in a new BBC drama...

Adapting Douglas Adams

"A common mistake that people make when trying to design something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools." This Douglas Adams quote could easily be applied to the 2005 screen version of his masterpiece The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Everything at the time said that this film - which was released four years after Adams' death - had to be a winner. Great dialogue, great visuals, great characters: surely he'd designed the perfect vehicle for an adaptation.

10/10/10 adds up to life, the universe and everything

Fans of the science fiction series The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy have gathered to pay homage to the work of author Douglas Adams.

Today Is The Answer To Life, The Universe & Everything

Today is October 10, 2010. 10/10/10. In binary, that's 42. And 42 is The Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe and Everything. Or at least, that's what Douglas Adams says.