Book to TV: Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency, Douglas Adams

Sherlock Holmes observed that once you have eliminated the impossible, then whatever remains, however improbable, must be the answer. I, however, do not like to eliminate the impossible.

Dirk Gently is a private detective with a difference: he takes the Quantum hypothesis that all things are interconnected, and applies it to his investigations. I'm probably thinking too deeply about this, but it seemed to be a comment on the rules of fiction. In a novel, there are no coincidences, and everything has a purpose in relation to the main plot. In Dirk Gently, we have a character within a fictional world who is aware of these rules, without actually acknowledging that he's in a novel. This makes for quite a surreal read, even without taking into account the other bizarre plot elements familiar to anyone who has read Douglas Adams' more famous Hitchhikers' Guide to the Galaxy books. Adams' matter-of-fact descriptsions -of strange, strange things: a horse apparating in the bathroom, a sofa lodged in an impossible position halfway up the stairs, and a time-travelling Cambridge don, mean that Dirk Genly could conceivably take place in the Hitchhikerverse, if only that hadn't been destroyed at the end of Mostly Harmless.


We don't actually get to meet the titular detective until some way into the first book, and until the sequel, Dirk isn't a viewpoint character. This role is filled in the most part by his old college friend Richard MacDuff, although admittedly Richard shares this position with an alien robot monk, a ghost, and the electric monk's horse (the one that materialised in the bathroom.) Just as in Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, much of the sciencey-technobabble goes straight over my head, leaving me somewhat discombobulated. Unlike Hitchhiker's, however, much of it comes back later, by which time it actually makes a little bit of sense. I found myself reminded a little of Doctor Who, which, I later discovered, was with good reason: the time-travelling Cambridge don was recycled from a disused Doctor Who script - written by Adams himself.

Dirk Gently has recently been adapted by the BBC for a three-part TV series, but although they share the same starting point - that is, Dirk Gently, his Holistic Detective Agency and his theory of the fundamental interconnectedness of everything, the stories have very little in common, and have a completely different tone and genre. It came across as a parody of Sherlock Holmes, especially with the modern adaptation Sherlock in the public consciousness, with more emphasis on the actual detecting than in the books, in which Dirk and all around him seem to be accidentally swept up into adventures. Richard MacDuff, here generally known by his surname, is now Gently's partner assistant  sidekick, and they are a team in the grand old tradition of Holmes and Watson, Poirot and Hastings, etc. My overall impression of this Dirk Gently was of a charlatan, a fraud who just makes everything up as he goes along, and through sheer audacity, turns out against all the odds to be right - although I found myself growing more convinced by his methods as the series went along.

Although the adaptations use elements of the books, they are generally only minor plot details with original stories built around them. Rather than being out-and-out science fiction, the BBC stories flip-flop over the genre line from surreal realism into fantasy, notably the episode dealing in robotic engineering. I'm not really qualified to comment on the advances in artificial intelligence, but I haven't yet heard of anything resembling the plot twist in episode 2 in real life!

I read Dirk Gently at the same time that the adaptation was being shown on TV, so have no pre-existing attachment to either version, which is probably for the best considering how different they are. They are best enjoyed with an acknowledgement that they are separate stories, separate 'verses - which is probably better suited to Douglas Adams than most authors, considering the many varied and contradictory Hitchhikers' Guide stories he created.

I have neglected you, dear blog.

Logging into my blog, I realise it has been a fortnight since I last updated, and my reviews before this have been rather infrequent. So, what have I been up to lately?

In the grand tradition of British weather, it has been unpredictable. After about three months of autumn, suddenly, at the end of September and beginning of October, the sun popped its head out from behind its cloudy blankets to give us a surprise week of summer - a week that, defying all tradition, coincided with my week off! I celebrated my birthday with a barbecue in the garden, and then, two days later, hunted out my winter coat, scarf and hat.

My reading has been on the slow side, and the books seem to have been all along the same sorts of lines of British, somewhat surreal comic fantasy or science fiction. My last review was of Rivers of London. After this came a reread of Pratchett's Witches Abroad, The Good Fairies of New York by Martin Millar - recommended by Neil Gaiman, who wrote the introduction of my edition, with the advice not to lend it out. Oops... Judith has it now. Then came The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Unfortunately, I had not got very far into the book, before I left it behind in a pub. For some reason, it seems to be the right sort of book to do this to - a cult classic, one which will need replacing many times in a lifetime. I trawled through the town's charity shops in search of a replacement, secure in the knowledge that one of them, somewhere, must have a copy. Like I said, it's that sort of book. My faith was rewarded, and I bought it for 50p.

I also watched the film fairly recently, and was inspired by one of the scenes to knit myself a Marvin doll. His personality started to come through before I had even finished sewing him together. I'm keeping a watchful eye on my teddies. I think they are all right, and won't need therapy...

On my week off, I went to Chichester for a couple of days to watch a production of Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, starring Michael Ball and Imelda Staunton. It was a fantastic show, hilarious, creepy and at times terrifying.

I've just recently got stuck into the second series of Downton Abbey on TV. I missed series 1 the first time around, but recorded it when it was repeated, and watched in the run-up to series 2. I am hooked! I'm loving the escapism into a world very different from my own, and engrossed in the lives of both the family Upstairs and, even more so, the servants Downstairs. Previously unsympathetic characters are becoming more rounded, the ice-cold Lady Mary is becoming nicer, Maggie Smith as the Dowager Countess is, without fail, brilliant. Only former footman Thomas still seems 2-dimensional, but I suspect that his hidden depths will be made known as the series goes along.

Do you remember me reviewing a book called Wight Moon: Out of the Shadows a little while back? It's a self-published book by a friend of mine, a local author, about a community of vampires on the Isle of Wight. I've spent the last few weeks editing book 2 for her, and I can reveal that this one is even better than the last, full of mystery and suspense that kept me glued to the screen long after I'd promised myself "one more chapter." There's a plotline that feels like a classic gothic novel, expansion of Elaine's version of vampire lore,  and secrets come to light about the characters we thought we knew. Excellent stuff, and I can't wait to read book 3.