A paranoid conspiracy theorist found dead in his home, and a man who believes his horoscopes are coming true... To the untrained eye, these two cases appear to be entirely unconnected, but to the mind of Dirk Gently - Holistic Detective - they are fundamentally and intrinsically entwined in the interconnectedness of all things. A little over a year since the pilot aired, Dirk Gently returned to our screens in the first episode of a three part series.
Starring Stephen Mangan as the eponymous detective, Dirk Gently, and Darren Boyd as his assistant, Richard MacDuff, the series kicked off with a complexly tangled web of seemingly separate events, all linked by Gently’s holistic approach, his ability to discern the quantum relationships that bind the elements together, and his proficiency for making lucky guesses.
Having discovered the corpse of paranoid conspiracy theorist and former client, Mr Edwards, Dirk concludes that his client was right - he was being watched by the Pentagon, and had been assassinated. All because of his most recent work, the Reason software; a program that, rather than ordering and analysing all the data to come to the right conclusion, would allow someone to pre-determine the decision they wanted it to come to, and the program would construct an irrefutable set of logical sounding steps to link the premise with the conclusion and justify the unjustifiable. Intent on catching the killer, and paranoid that he and MacDuff are also being targetted by the CIA, Dirk leaves some subtle evidence to trick them into thinking he is now in possession of the prototype software.
However, as seemingly random coincidences cross his path, Dirk ends up taking on two new cases, convinced that they will be in some way connected to the death of Mr Edwards. The first, investigating whether a woman’s husband is cheating on her. The second, helping aforementioned cheating husband determine why his horoscopes have inexplicably been coming true. As Dirk begins to put the pieces together, combined with coincidental but nonetheless vital encounters and “zen navigation” (“Find someone who looks like they know where they’re going and follow them. I rarely end up where I was intending to go, but I often end up somewhere that I needed to be.”), the tangled web of interconnected events surrounding Mr Edwards’ murder begins to unravel...
Throughout, Mangan is the very epitome of Dirk Gently, perfectly capturing the eccentricity and posturing egotism of the hapless detective. Coupled with Boyd’s brilliant portrayal as the exasperated and often sarcastic MacDuff, the two make for quite a double act - you couldn't ask for better casting. They’re like the comedy equivalent of Sherlock Holmes and John Watson.
Although the episodes aren’t direct adaptations of Douglas Adams’s Dirk Gently novels, the series’ writer and creator Howard Overman - the man behind Misfits - has included quite a few nods to the books. He's encapsulated the essence of Dirk Gently, the weird and wonderful world that was created in Adams’s mind, and even though I’m often sceptical when a writer decides to move the narrative away from the source material, Overman's fresh, new adventures make an excellent addition to the Gently legacy.
All in all, the first episode of Dirk Gently was thoroughly enjoyable and fantastically entertaining - I’m certainly looking forward to the rest of the series!
No comments:
Post a Comment