INTERVIEW: ‘Dirk Gently’ Review & Interviews with cast on their wacky (and hilarious) new series

Tonight the BBC America adaptation of the Douglas Adams series, Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency hits ours screens. The series centers on Todd (Elijah Wood), a mild mannered guy who is just trying to get through life at his hotel job, and help to pay the medical bills of his sister (Amanda, played by Hannah Marks). He’s clearly struggling, and things just get worse when a grizzly murder happens in his hotel, and suddenly he finds himself wrapped up with Dirk Gently (Samuel Barnett). Gently is a man who calls himself a “Holistic Detective” and believes that everything is connected (tagline!). Gently solves crimes not so much by doing any actual detective work, but by simply trying to interpret the strange things that happen around him. It’s strangely effective (and hilarious).

Douglas Adams has proven difficult to adapt. In fact, Series Creator Max Landis actually described him as “unadaptable,” citing previous films and TV versions of both Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy and Dirk Gently as failures to capture the true spirit of Adams’ work. (I must say I loved both the 2005 Hitchhikers film – I have read the book – and the 2010 Dirk Gently series – which I haven’t read). Landis’ hopes his series has managed to capture the spirit of Adams’ work, while telling a new and unusual (so very Adams) story.

The result? The series is weird, make no mistake, but it is Douglas Adams weird. It’s also hilarious, and very charming. I went into it very wary, mostly because I did love that short lived BBC series so much, and I wasn’t quite sure what to make of the trailers for the BBC America adaptation. After one episode I was hooked, and episodes 2 and 3 just reinforced that feeling. Dirk Gently is not for everyone, it’s likely going to be one of those shows you either love or just don’t get, but it’s well worth the effort to find out.

Still need to make up your mind about Dirk Gently? Well, this week we met with cast members Elijah Wood (Todd), Samuel Barnett (Dirk Gently), Jade Eshete (Farah Black), and Fiona Dourif (Bart Curlish) at the Series Premiere at the Paley Center for Media, in Beverly Hills, and talked to them about what to expect from Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency.