Dirk Gently

A welcome antidote to that snooty know-all Sherlock Holmes, Dirk Gently brought his tangential approach to solving crimes for the third and final time in the series, aided and abetted by long-suffering sidekick MacDuff.

Fun and infuriating in equal measure, Gently went out with a flourish, investigating murders his own bad behaviour had inadvertently precipitated and a stalker who turned out to be Gently himself.

More of the same, please.

Dirk Gently episode 3 review

In this incarnation, Dirk Gently is gently comedic and gently entertaining (the puns may be obvious but they are apt). Would I urge BBC4 to make another series? Perhaps, gently.

Dirk Gently: Series 1 - Final Review

So despite a little grousing, Dirk Gently is a slick, engaging addition to the quirky detective show genre, and I'd like to see more of it. So, y'know, still give it a go.

The sociopathic private detective is chased through his tip of an office. DI Gilks (ever-excellent Jason Watkins) is on the warpath: two of Gently's ex-clients have been killed and he is the only connection. In the last story of a brief, scattershot series - a cheerfully unfeasible case of stalking, rare toxins and moonlighting builders - tolerant assistant Macduff finally snaps. But that moment and the clever ending aside, Dirk Gently still isn't quite catching fire. Dirk in progress, you could say.

As this three-part mini-series comes to an end, Dirk's negligence, scattiness and parsimony is catching up with him. He can't pay the rent, he can't pay his staff and he can't keep a cleaner. Worse still, someone's bumping off his past clients one by one. But, as is so often the way in matters Gently, might it be that all these situations are interconnected? It's probably been the misfortune of Howard Overman - who has adapted Douglas Adams's novels - that Dirk Gently appeared at roughly the same time as the masterful and, it must be said, much more lavishly produced Sherlock. It has its amusing moments, and Stephen Mangan and Darren Boyd make a decent double act. But most of the time, DG just comes over as Sherlock's slightly goofy younger brother.

We'd love another series of this double act of Stephen Mangan as Douglas Adams's eccentric holistic detective and Darren Boyd as his eyebrow-raising assistant. But for now, we'll just have to savour this twisting and turning final episode, in which Dirk is framed after several of his clients are murdered.

Dirk Gently: Series 1 Episode 3 review

Happily, one thing this episode doesn't share with its predecessor is its policy on being amusing. It's not as funny as the first story in the series, but there are some definitely some chuckles.

Not enjoying the Dirk Gently pilot very much, I predicted this "comedy-drama" - another warning required for these - wouldn't get a series. So here it is. I like Stephen Mangan, who plays the holistic private eye; I like Darren Boyd. But the most telling line was the latter's "Wow, that's... bollocks."

Dirk Gently, 1.2 - episode two

It pleases me how Dirk Gently appears to be at the centre of a Venn diagram, sandwiched between Doctor Who and Sherlock.

Following on from a successful pilot in late 2010, BBC Four's commissioned a full series of this comedy drama loosely based on the novels by Douglas Adams, and starring Stephen Mangan as the holistic detective.

The first episode in the series, which sees Dirk deal with a murder that has links to the Pentagon, contains some funny situations created by Howard Overman, the man behind the adaptation. Such things include Dirk breaking into a house of the murder victim by smashing a glass door being witnessed by those inside. Then there's Dirk surveillance operation which goes completely wrong thanks to his partner/assistant MacDuff's (Darren Boyd) new chair.

However, personally speaking I'm one of those people who would have been happier with the original stories being adapted for the screen rather than having new ones developed. While it does contain some elements from the original books, such as Zen navigation (instead of using a map to go where you want to go, you follow someone who looks like they know where they go, often leading you to somewhere you need to be), it would be nice to see Adams's original tales on screen.

Still, if you too are annoyed by the lack of faithfulness in this adaptation, there are always the more faithful Radio 4 stories starring Harry Enfield, which does follow Adam's work much more closely (Electric Monks and Norse Gods included).