Chai tea, late nights and a Douglas Adams love-fest

So Joff is back from Rainbow Serpent, so I have treated him to a televisual delight this evening in the form of two things.

The first is the glorious but loose adaptation of Dirk Gently.

This was on BBC4 a few weeks back. It is the adaptation of the Douglas Adams book by Howard Overman of ‘Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency’. It takes a lot of creative freedom as a story very loosely based on the book, and I think, and hope it gives more scope for them to produce more episodes. It stars Stephen Mangan, who as always is wonderful. Also in Dirk Gently is Darren Boyd, who I have also been recently enjoying in the series ‘Whites’ and had seen only a few hours earlier appearing briefly in the Bafta nominated 4 Lions.

Gently is a slightly off the wall private detective, who is hired, in this episode, to find an cat belonging to an elderly woman. This may not seem like a plot starting point, but it leads to an explosions, a missing billionaire, a bit of faking a suicide attempt and other such outlandish behaviour. It’s simply fantastic and I cross my fingers BBC4 commission more.

Incidentally, last year I had the joy of seeing Mangan, Boyd and Sophie Winkleman record an episode of Elvenquest for Radio 4 .

The second thing I have lapped up is the BBC documentary ‘Last Chance to See” in which Stephen Fry follows the footsteps of his friend Douglas Adams’ trip around the world seeing the nearly extinct species with Adams former travel companion. Douglas Adams and Mark Carwardine produced a radio show and book in 1989 where they had documented animals facing extinction. This documentary more or less follows the footsteps 20 years on, looking at the lucky few species who have survived.

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