Grab your towels, hoopy froods: BBC Radio Four has just commissioned a new Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy radio drama based on the last novel of the ‘trilogy’, And Another Thing.
The original Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy was a radio drama that first aired in 1978, which creator Douglas Adams later turned into a novel by the same name. This new series is based on the novel Eoin Colfer wrote based on Adams’ materials following his death in 2001. The six-part series will air in May 2017 on BBC Radio Four and will include some new material that’s never been published. The last radio series, based on Adams’ book Mostly Harmless, aired in 2005.
According to the British Comedy Guide, the production is still in its early stages, but director Dirk Maggs noted that he’s expecting to bring in the original cast from the earlier shows: Simon Jones as Arthur Dent, Mark Wing-Davey as Zaphod Beeblebrox and Geoff McGiven as Ford Prefect, with Sandra Dickinson (who was in the original television adaptation) as Trillian.
Originally posted on Gizmodo.
Comments
6 responses to “Grab Your Towels: BBC Radio Has Ordered A New Hitchhiker’s Guide Radio Drama”
I was excited until I read “This new series is based on the novel Eoin Colfer wrote”
Yep. What an utterly forgettable book. Not bad per se, just entirely pointless.
Actually, I think it was bad. It was written like the author was trying to ape Adams’ style without actually understanding how his style worked (constant call-backs to the earlier books, expanding massively on things that were just one-shot gags because they only WORKED as one-shot gags, like Wowbagger the Infinitely Prolonged, the Norse pantheon really existing etc). Plus Arthur and Ford were reduced to practical extras and Random was made the most insufferable bitch in the history of fiction (where in Mostly Harmless she’d actually been quite convincing as a genuinely confused and constantly upset teenager with no grip on her life). The fact that it was commissioned by Adams’ estate to cash in on the name despite Adams’ will EXPLICITLY requesting they not try and milk his work further just made me sick and the fact that it was really shit just made it worse.
Woohoo!
Oh.
I didn’t even know there was a 6th book.. I always thought Mostly Harmless wrapped up the series with the ultimate conclusion.
It was written after Douglas Adams’ death, and published with the blessing of his estate. Unfortunately it reads like bad fan fiction, which is probably why there isn’t a 7th book in the series.
Nope
If anyone heard the 2004-2005 extensions of the radio plays, they were really pretty terrible – and they were largely based on Adams’ books (and a bit of Coffer’s at the end).
I wouldn’t go to a lot of trouble to track these next ones down.