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It’s an especially fun movie from a director and cast who are clearly having a good time allowing themselves to let loose.

It's hard to see any effort in the film. There's no comedy to speak of, no real drama and, worst of all.

After playing with our expectations, this turns out to be a very different sort of film.

This live action production of Douglas Adams' book is an excellent example of taking source material and turning into a new thing. The show retained all of it's original harmony with the original themes and added to them in a very enjoyable way.If you look at the low scoring reviews, you'd be forgiven for thinking this would be a badly done production. But that's not the case. The reviewers are simply forgetting that all new works are derivative and if we were to be truly faithful we could just have an hour of teletext showing pages from the book instead.The story is holistically interconnected with the modern world (which Adams' loved) and the original stories. A perfect adaptation.

As far as it goes, the pilot episode really only seemed to have skimmed over elements of the books. It felt as if they picked things out, like time machines, the names, a mystery about cats, and Dirk's refrigerator argument.The major problem for this series is that it shouldn't relate to Dirk Gently at all. Though Adams was a big proponent of his work (book, TV, radio) never being the same, there were always elements connected them. Even if characters were portrayed differently by looks alone, they always had something connecting them back to the original incarnation.Dirk Gently doesn't do that, with exception to the title character. Gordon Way (though minor in appearance) is no longer the owner of successful WayForward, and he isn't the brother of Susan Way (who ceased to exist). He's a heartbroken rich man with a time machine who is trying to get back to Susan but ultimately fails. Nothing about the original Gordon remains except his name, status of wealth, and that he works with computers (except he was described in TV as "obsessed with," and that ultimately was MacDuff's personality in the book).Richard MacDuff is a polar opposite to himself. In the book, he's forgetful and slightly absentminded, haphazard, and more cautious toward Dirk. He's employed by Gordon. When he phones Susan, he makes apologies to and plans with her answering machine. Later, he breaks in and steals the tape. Not so for the show! MacDuff comes off as impulsively rude and a bit stupid. The best example for that is the very beginning. He's caught by Dirk burgling his own home to steal his girlfriend's laptop because he wants to break into her email to delete a scathing break-up message. Also, he's unemployed.Susan takes on an entirely new character and nothing except her first name and relationship to MacDuff is recognisable. Literally everything is different, including her last name and occupation.That is the main problem. There is nothing recognisable, nothing left of Adams' characters. For that, I give it an exceptionally low score.HOWEVER, had they renamed everyone and made it truly "inspired by" the book by taking the concept rather than butchering the characters completely, it would have been a wonderful stand alone. Another idea would be that they should have left out the stories entirely of everyone who wasn't Dirk and made an entirely new idea. There were so many avenues they could've taken, and they took the one that was easiest rather than exceptional.

If I wasn't so familiar with the superb Dirk Gently audiobooks, this would have been so much more enjoyable. As it was, each time I managed to suspend my memories and enjoy the production for what it was (Stephen Mangan and Darren Boyd are excellent and make it eminently watchable) I was brought up short by another monstrous deviation from the original. I can accept that condensing an entire novel into an hour of television will mean drastic cuts and consequent streamlining - what I cannot understand or accept is basic plot, relationship and character re-working. For example in the original, MacDuff is a brilliant software designer, employed and exploited by Gordon Way, and MacDuff's girlfriend Susan is Way's sister - not an old flame with whom he is still obsessed. (It's interesting to see in the IMDb cast list for the show that Helen Baxendale is billed as playing Susan WAY (as per the book) not Susan HARMISON (as per the TV production). I found it irritating to notice casual references to the original: e.g. on Gently's blackboard is scrawled "Electronic Monk" (blink and you'd miss it) - a key character in the original. Perhaps these incidentals were intended by the writer as a nod of recognition to Adams, but they struck me more as a jibe, suggesting "I've got your works and I'm taking over - and there's nothing you can do about it". I certainly did feel that Howard Overman, credited as the "writer and creator" paid scant regard to Adams's work other than to make use of his characters and concepts. I can't help wondering if, had the Dirk Gently name and associations not been used, but instead it had been a script about an unconventional private detective, whether it would not have been better? It was after all only very loosely based on the book, almost unrecognisably so and with plenty of new material introduced. But perhaps the Dirk Gently element is relatively irrelevant - perhaps the essential crowd-puller is the Douglas Adams name. Stephen Mangan's portrayal of Gently was pretty convincing - without that I think it would have had far less in common with Adams's books. And Darren Boyd has that rare gift of seeming to play a part simply as himself, never varying - yet becoming totally believable as that character.There was one continuity blip that delighted me - about halfway through, Gently and MacDuff are seated at a table in the pub. Gently sips his pint, putting it down about 3/4 full, then knocks back a chaser, stands up and leaves. MacDuff is drinking his own pint, the barman comes over to ask for payment and Gently's glass is magically empty. Perhaps it's the interconnectedness of Gently to his beer at work ....I do hope there will be a series - but even more I hope that Adams's stories will be used, not just the names and a couple of plot elements.

Having enjoyed Douglas Adam's Dirk Gently novels many year ago I was interested to see if this television version would be enjoyable too. It soon became apparent that this would only be very loosely based on the books but that didn't stop it being enjoyable. Steven Manghan was good as the somewhat shambolic detective who believes that everything in the universe is connected. We are introduced to him as he is interviewing a client whose cat has gone missing; this might seem somewhat routine but it leads to an old university friend, his girl friend and how they are connected to the missing cat and an equally missing billionaire. Gently's methods are rather eccentric and more than a little dubious… he breaks in to a warehouse at one point and later pays a ten year old computer hacker with two hundred cigarettes! Mangan is ably supported by Darran Boyd who plays his friend McDuff and Helen Bexandale who plays McDuff's girlfriend Susan.While this may be a detective story that is not the programme's main appeal, this is a good thing as the mystery isn't that great… it was funny though; I found myself laughing far more than I expected to. I also liked the fact that Gently wasn't the most moral of people; during the course of the show we see him driving off after hitting somebody with his car, conning his friend into joining the business so he can have a holiday and stealing a psychologist's files. Although this was made as a one off I wouldn't be surprised if a series were to be commissioned although if that were the case I wouldn't expect it to remain on the digital backwater that is BBC4.