Someone is killing Dirk’s clients…

The best has been saved for last with this mini-series of Dirk Gently adventures, with a fast-paced fun hour that captures the manic nature of Douglas Adams’ creation and fuses it with the strengths of Stephen Mangan’s portrayal coupled with Darren Boyd’s Richard.

Like the best of these stories, there’s actually some proper detective work going on inside Dirk’s brain – as he points out, in his usual convoluted way, he does make sense of what’s happening eventually, and his showing off to Macduff tends to lead him in the right direction. The majority of the clues are even there for the viewer; luckily the TV version doesn’t add time travel, relative dimensions or stray copyright-busting TARDIS rooms into the mix, so watchers have a fair chance of guessing what’s up.

It’s been a sensible move not to use Gilks in every story this time; he’s a little bit one-note as a character, and if the creators aren’t careful, he’ll end up like Inspector Teal in the Saint stories: someone who becomes the butt of the joke, and we forget that he couldn’t have reached his rank if he weren’t a good detective.

Hopefully the success of this season will lead to a further set of adventures, but this have been well worth while.  8/10

Paul Simpson

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