Dirk Gently

Dirk Gently review

I was really looking forward to Dirk Gently. However, the expected firework display of wit and originality never happened: instead, the whole thing sort of fizzled out.

There was a telling disclaimer on new detective series Dirk Gently. 'Based on the novel by Douglas Adams', it ran, not 'adapted from', and it was a subtle distinction. Acknowledging there was no way all the multifarious ideas that tumble from Adams's pages could squeeze into a TV show without bursting the screen, this was a trimmed-down version.

The first clue was in the pared-back title, which ditched Holistic Detective Agency from the Adams original in favour of the presumably more user-friendly Dirk Gently. Disconcertingly, this brought Mark Wahlberg's Dirk Diggler in Boogie Nights to mind ('Dirk... gently'), so we were off to a rocky start. But, slowly, this new Dirk began to win me over.

Stephen Mangan, half-man, half-hair, is a perfect Dirk, a detective whose unshakeable belief in the fundamental interconnectedness between all things eliminates all the tedious legwork that most private detectives have to indulge in. Dirk simply wanders around observing stuff, looking for unlikely links, and Bob's your uncle. Well he is, if you look hard enough.

It's a spin on the butterfly flaps its wings in Beijing chaos theory and, in the Adams books, allows for superlative flights of comic scientific fantasy. The TV Dirk Gently takes a more prosaic approach, playing up comedy over drama, and - Schrödinger's cat aside - the science takes a back seat.

At times it felt forced, with a sense of trying slightly too hard when a touch more subtlety would have brought out the essential Adamsian eccentricity.

But there's plenty of mileage in Mangan's engaging mugging in a role that plays to his strengths in a way we haven't seen since Green Wing. He deserves a series but, if not, there is an upside: the fundamental interconnectedness of things should lead you back to the original Dirk Gently books, which have always unjustly played second fiddle to Adams's Hitchhiker's Guide series.

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.

Douglas Adams's holistic detective Dirk Gently arrives

Here's hoping that tonight's one-off show penned by Misfits writer Howard Overman and starring Stephen Mangan, leads to a full series.

How slavishly should screen adaptations follow a book?

It's been made very clear to me, mainly through conversations on Twitter, that a lot of people hold the Dirk Gently books in great affection and that they are going to be very upset if we don't get it right.

Thanks to the brilliant Sherlock there's been something of a resurgence in kooky detective shows of late, the latest of which is Dirk Gently, a character plucked from Douglas Adams's cult novels. Adams is perhaps best known as the author of The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy and this hour-long adaptation starring Stephen Mangan in the titular role will be pleasingly familiar to fans of the title. For those not in the know, Gently is a detective who works on the basis that everything from a missing cat to an exploding warehouse are fundamentally interconnected. The only problem is that he's a total shambles, and some people suspect he's just a scam artist...

Dirk Gently is a Douglas Adams creation, a shambolic and strange 'holistic' detective who runs an agency 'based on the fundamental interconnectedness of all things'. This pilot, from Misfits creator Howard Overman, delivers a enjoyably quirky adventure in which Dirk (Stephen Mangan) is asked to find a pensioner's missing cat - a case in which Dirk's old uni pal and his girlfriend are inexplicably caught up.

Dirk Gently interview

As the BBC prepares to air its adaptation of Douglas Adams' Dirk Gently, here is an interview with Stephen Mangan, Helen Baxendale, Darren Boyd, and producer Chris Carey.