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daibhidcJust seen this on Netflix and on balance, I think I liked it.
First things first, no, Dirk is almost nothing like the novel version, possibly even less so than the BBC Four version; the fundemental difference, I think, being that the book and Mangan Gentlys behaved in a bizarre way largely because they were show-offs trying to achieve a certain effect, whereas Barnett Gently is genuinely weird and completely perplexed by the way other people react to him.
This is most obvious in the fact that this Dirk Gently knows he has some kind of special ability[1] and tries to keep quiet about it. This contrasts sharply with the other Gentlys, who would be very quick to hint at strange powers, while being privately horrified and in denial of any evidence this might genuinely be the case. The idea that Dirk is kind of a conman, or at least would like to consider himself as such, which was downplayed by the BBC Four series, is competely absent.
But it works. An interesting observation someone else made is that if Adams originally created Dirk as a stand-in for the Fourth Doctor as he turned bits of Shada and City of Death into a novel, this version is very much the Eleventh. Indeed, once you've noticed that, he's perhaps a little too much the Eleventh Doctor in places. Especially given a story that's particularly timey-wimey.
The story is ... actually, I can't even begin to describe the storyline, which is exactly as it should be. One thing I think the BBC Four series got wrong was that it never had time to create a tangled thicket of apparently-unconnected-but-Dirk-says-everything-is events the way the books did. Weird things happened, but how they were related was always pretty straightforward. There was never anything like a maddened eagle which turns out to be the direct connection between an angry Norse god and Dirk moonlighting as a fortune teller.
Whereas this story begins with a satisfyingly Adamsesque mix of apparently random things happening to our Richard McDuff character, Todd, culminating with an impossible murder and the arrival of Dirk. And instead of just following one Weird Thing, as the time travel and robot episodes of TBBC4S did, there are multiple Weird Things interacting. Or rather, it eventually transpires that there's one Weird Thing which is manifesting in multiple seemingly unrelated ways. Three questions, one answer.
Todd is an interesting character, largely unsympathetic apart from his protective attitude to his sister and his tragic backstory (and then quite unbelievably unsympathetic once we get the reveal there), but a decent guy somewhere deep down. In a way, he's got elements of the book Dirk - the guy who wants to be a conman claiming unlikely expenses from old ladies while doing nothing to find their cats, but keeps finding himself saving the world instead.
Another great character is Bart, the "holistic assassin" who uses a philosophy similar to Dirk's to kill whoever crosses her path on the assumption they must be the people she's supposed to kill (and, like Dirk, inexplicably appears to be right) is a fantastic concept, and Fiona Dourif's portrayal is wonderful; just as disconnected from the world as Dirk, but in an entirely different way. In fact, all the characters are pretty great, even the minor ones like the Missing Persons guys who are just open-minded enough to realise that this case is much more complicated than it should be. (And I'm going to miss them in Season 2. Sniff.)
And we end with a whole bunch of intriguing sequel hooks, although I expect the main plot of Season 2 will have nothing to do with any of them ... at first.
[1]There was a point when I was very much afraid that Project Blackwing was going to be The Secret Origin Of Dirk Gently, which would have been terrible. Luckily, it's established that his inexplicable abilities remain inexplicable, and Project Blackwing were just trying - and failing - to explict them.
First things first, no, Dirk is almost nothing like the novel version, possibly even less so than the BBC Four version; the fundemental difference, I think, being that the book and Mangan Gentlys behaved in a bizarre way largely because they were show-offs trying to achieve a certain effect, whereas Barnett Gently is genuinely weird and completely perplexed by the way other people react to him.
This is most obvious in the fact that this Dirk Gently knows he has some kind of special ability[1] and tries to keep quiet about it. This contrasts sharply with the other Gentlys, who would be very quick to hint at strange powers, while being privately horrified and in denial of any evidence this might genuinely be the case. The idea that Dirk is kind of a conman, or at least would like to consider himself as such, which was downplayed by the BBC Four series, is competely absent.
But it works. An interesting observation someone else made is that if Adams originally created Dirk as a stand-in for the Fourth Doctor as he turned bits of Shada and City of Death into a novel, this version is very much the Eleventh. Indeed, once you've noticed that, he's perhaps a little too much the Eleventh Doctor in places. Especially given a story that's particularly timey-wimey.
The story is ... actually, I can't even begin to describe the storyline, which is exactly as it should be. One thing I think the BBC Four series got wrong was that it never had time to create a tangled thicket of apparently-unconnected-but-Dirk-says-everything-is events the way the books did. Weird things happened, but how they were related was always pretty straightforward. There was never anything like a maddened eagle which turns out to be the direct connection between an angry Norse god and Dirk moonlighting as a fortune teller.
Whereas this story begins with a satisfyingly Adamsesque mix of apparently random things happening to our Richard McDuff character, Todd, culminating with an impossible murder and the arrival of Dirk. And instead of just following one Weird Thing, as the time travel and robot episodes of TBBC4S did, there are multiple Weird Things interacting. Or rather, it eventually transpires that there's one Weird Thing which is manifesting in multiple seemingly unrelated ways. Three questions, one answer.
Todd is an interesting character, largely unsympathetic apart from his protective attitude to his sister and his tragic backstory (and then quite unbelievably unsympathetic once we get the reveal there), but a decent guy somewhere deep down. In a way, he's got elements of the book Dirk - the guy who wants to be a conman claiming unlikely expenses from old ladies while doing nothing to find their cats, but keeps finding himself saving the world instead.
Another great character is Bart, the "holistic assassin" who uses a philosophy similar to Dirk's to kill whoever crosses her path on the assumption they must be the people she's supposed to kill (and, like Dirk, inexplicably appears to be right) is a fantastic concept, and Fiona Dourif's portrayal is wonderful; just as disconnected from the world as Dirk, but in an entirely different way. In fact, all the characters are pretty great, even the minor ones like the Missing Persons guys who are just open-minded enough to realise that this case is much more complicated than it should be. (And I'm going to miss them in Season 2. Sniff.)
And we end with a whole bunch of intriguing sequel hooks, although I expect the main plot of Season 2 will have nothing to do with any of them ... at first.
[1]There was a point when I was very much afraid that Project Blackwing was going to be The Secret Origin Of Dirk Gently, which would have been terrible. Luckily, it's established that his inexplicable abilities remain inexplicable, and Project Blackwing were just trying - and failing - to explict them.
