Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency (the BBC America TV series) [SPOILERS!]

There was some discussion on this on the general television thread, but I think it deserves a thread of it's own. It's on Netflix too now!

It's been 20+ years since I read the novels, but as far as I can recall, I don't think they've kept much from them in this series? You have the main character named Dirk Gently, who solves mysteries with a holistic approach, but that's pretty much it? The tone of the series is way different from what I remember from the books, volatile and violent instead of cosy and witty.

That said, I thought this was an excellent series in its own right! All the main characters are excellently done by the actors, especially Dirk and Farah and Bart. Bart seems to be kind of a parody of the psycho assassin in Orphan Black, right? Or at least her actor seems to imitate that character, and does it pretty well. I've never seen her in anything else, but she's pretty awesome in capturing all her crazy mannerisms. And I love how Bart isn't unrealistically prettied up (unlike that Orphan Black character), with her yellow teeth and clumpy hair she really looks like for whom personal hygiene isn't a particularly big concern.

The main bad guy I thought was another high point of the first series, he was waayy overacted, but it worked nicely within the general tone. Pretty much the best moment in the entire series is when he's captured Dirk and Todd, and they expect him to give the typical villain speech and explain what's going on, but it turns out he's even more confused about the recent events than they are! That was funny but also poignant, because the various characters trying to get by in the world even thought they don't quite have a full grip on it seemed to be the main theme of the series.

As for the cliffhanger at the end, I think it was thrilling and terrifically done, in that a cliffhanger where everything suddenly goes from great to hopeless may often feel super contrived, but here all the pieces were set in motion long before the ending, so it made sense. I'm just hoping the second series won't turn into an Orphan Black/Stranger Things style paranoid sci-fi, that's way more worn out than what the first series did. I'd rather have the main characters solve yet another quirky sci-fi mystery than go against the men in black.

I did like Elijah Wood in this too, though I guess he's always destined to play the hapless everyman who gets drawn into weird events... But he's pretty good at it, so I don't mind, he has the perfect face and scale of expressions to play a regular bloke put through inordinate suffering. I was also gonna say he put on a totally believable American accent in this, but I checked Wikipedia and turns out he actually is American and not English, lol.

A silly bit of LotR related trivia: in this series we have Frodo playing Watson to an eccentric British detective, and in Sherlock Bilbo was the actual Watson to the actual Holmes. Runs in the family, I guess. (And of course Bilbo was also another everyman character in another Douglas Adams adaptation.)

I am still a little behind, but I am really enjoying it

Best way I cam describe it is endearingly incomprehensible. Like I don't really *get* most of what's going on but I love it anyway. The actor who plays Dirk is so warm & charming & fun. And yeah, Elijah's made a later-career out of "guy who has no idea wtf is happening" but he's so good at it!

Bart is awesome...and t yeah, yr comparison to Helena in Orphan Black is otm.

Oh and i really love Richard Schiff & Neil Brown Jr together. It's like watching Law & Order within the show, lol! it totally works. Plus I am a huge fan of Richard Schiff in all things, he's the best.

The Holistic assassin is the best.

I thought she was great but very distracting because she looks so much like her dad and pretty much played it like he would have.

I thoroughly enjoyed this but it works very much like Dirk would describe it - it all appears unconnected then suddenly coalesces into something coherent about halfway through.

who is her dad?

brad dourif I assume

i too liked this series. the books are superb obv and it has little to nothing in common with them, but it stands on it's own really well

i was worried they were getting too close to explaining too much and ruining the whole thing, but in the end it mainly still didn't make sense thankfully

Really? I thought pretty much all of it fit together (and was spelled out in Dirk's summary monologue) by the end of it, or at least the main "Patrick's Spring's machine" plot did. Which parts you thought didn't make sense?

The only things that weren't really explained were those that were clearly saved for the second season, i.e. how exactly did the participants of Project Blackwing get their abilities, and what are the army folks planning to do with them?

the latter stuff mainly. also the way it fit was batshit enough to only half-click, which was a relief.

Aye, her dad's Brad.

I'm a few episodes behind so I haven't read any of the posts here yet but I wanted to quickly say that this show rules and I love it

just from the title i wanted to kick the subway poster hard

morbs: that was what douglas adams called his books, not much to be done there!?

also not what you would expect from the title, i think.

i know. I never heard of these Adams books tbqh.

grew up on them even more than hitchhikers guide i think, because they made so much less sense i kept going back to try to figure out what it meant

Mpho Koaho as Ken is sort of quietly compelling and awesome and an Actor To Watch.

Yeah, he was really good in an unassuming way. And I liked how his arc parallelled with Todd, just like Bart's did with Dirk.

Speaking of actors, I thought the main bad guy looked familiar, but I didn't realise he was the chief mechanic guy in Battlestar Galactica until I checked him on Wikipedia right now! And in retrospect the resemblence between Bart's actor and Brad Dourif is totally obvious too, but I didn't get that either before it was pointed out here. I guess I'm just bad at faces.

Also, I don't want to be a creepy guy who drools after celebrities, but my god did the Jade Eshete, the woman who plays Farah, look gorgeous in this! And she did a great job in making her an insecurities seem credible, so she wasn't just a cliched Badass Action Woman. She seems to be a total newcomer too, with just a couple of very minor roles before this. This series has done a great job in casting newcomers and relatively unknown actors (except for Wood, of course) who totally inhabit their roles.

The guy who played the old army dude was a very familiar face though, I'm sure I've seen him do supporting roles in various movies/series.

I enjoyed this, hope there will be more. Assume the end set up would suggest that's coming.

It's been a long time since I read the novel I did, and I'm not sure i've read more than one. Can't rememeber if the series really has anything to do with that source beyond the idea of holistic detection.

I also just rewatched the UK series and think there may have been elements of taht borrowed so maybe tehy were in the book. But those elements did seem pretty incidental. THere's a thuig that looks a lot like the most frequently seen cult memeber and a few other things.
UK series has Dirk as more of a scumbag who refuses to pay any bills seemingly anywhere and cons an old college mate into floating his agency.
There's a Pilot available as a download that I don't know whether it got a terrestrial broadcast. GIves more of a backstory. But that's the uk version and may have been out on dvd since.
I enjoyed that too, pretty different. He's much more of a seedy detective in that. Seems to be a bit of an innocent in the US one. Is he thought of as being on the autistic spectrum?

BBC America has confirmed there's a asecond season coming out next year.

I finished the last three episodes last night and MAN

this show has forced me to admit i have a deep, abiding crush on elijah wood

the pilot is the worst thing ive ever seen

a pox on all involved and anyone who liked it

kisses an all to yis but i mean rly

you hate most fun anyway, wots new

the guy playing whatever version of dirk gently is shockingly annoying. a shockingly annoying imitation of michael sheen imitating tony blair. how can you defend that, for starters?

he's goddamn DELIGHTFUL is how i defend him

The character is supposed to be annoying at first, it's a plot point that Frodo can't stand him.

that is also otm

it is notm

I mean, it's kind of blatantly in the script that Todd thinks Dirk is the worst, largely because he is so annoying. I'm not sure how that can be up for debate.

because im not critiquing the character, who is plainly annoying manic pixie dream detective. tho obv that is an issue.

it is separate to the actor's performance, which is annoying in roughly forty unrelated ways.

yr annoying in more ways

i really like the sister, and Jade Eshete.

Darragh is entirely otm to the point at which, an episode and a half in, I thought the series would be entirely unwatchable. Struggle on and it's very good though. The supporting cast is excellent.

i shall revert to my dr who/sherlock position of hey im glad this utter turd is giving joy to somebody peace out

so deems do just watch coal burning in a fireplace for fun or

This show... OMG

i can't remember a thing about the novels. think i read them when i was about 12. i'm just assuming this has nothing to do with it anyway.

but yeah i'm loving this. it's got everything

Honestly my own bias about this is 'Fuck Max Landis' but I'll take the praise in this thread on board.

Anyone watching season 2? I flew through it (as I did with S1) but it was a bit worse overall. SPOILERS...

S2 was less fun certainly and Tuomas' fear was almost dead on in the first post - it went in a real Orphan Black/Stranger Things style. That aspect was not as fun as the bizarre fantasy land stuff, which is more what I want from this show. I didn't need Dirk to be brooding at all, that seemed like a misstep.

The plot was sufficiently weird, but they explained almost all the mysteries about halfway through the session. S1 handled that aspect way better, keeping some of the mystery all the way up to the end, and I wish this season wrapped up sooner. There were 10 episodes instead of 8 and probably 8 would have been ideal. That said, I liked the new characters a lot and there were many times where I had that wtf reaction that made S1 so great

I should note that while I want more stuff like the fantasy land and less like Orphan Black/Stranger Things, they actually handled the OB/ST stuff way better. The incompetence of both Black Wing and the cops was great - in fact, I think they were purposely trying to parody those shows. I didn't like any of the fantasy land characters and they spent way too much time on the boring fighting between the people there. So it's weird to say that's more what I want, but if done well, I think it would have been much better

The actress playing The Beast had me laughing with her delivery.

I watched it every week, since I liked season 1 so much... season 2 was weaker but still a lot of fun. Agree that emo Dirk was a big misstep. Amanda Brotzman was the star this time around.

I'm sad they cancelled the show... maybe Netflix will pick it up for a season 3.

I have really enjoyed S2 (still a couple of eps away from finishing it) -- it was SO weird from the get-go and following the story to the point where it all linked up was fun. The concept and the way it translates into the offworld fantasy was hilarious and great.
My only negative was that the story and all of its moving parts does overshadow the relationship between Dirk and Todd which was my favorite aspect of s1. I was a bit bummed that there were less scenes with them together. But everyone else was great so it didn't hugely bug me.

Oh and Hugo was v enjoyable this season. I love how dumb he is.

Yeah I could see Netflix picking it up for S3, this show has a lot of potential. I have to wonder if the writers just try to think of the strangest concept possible and then see how they can make it into a detective story

xp omg yes, Amanda was so great this season

they messed up Bart a little, too... they didn't seem to really know what to do with her.

yeah and I didnt fully get/believe Ken’s turn. Like, i thought he was going along to get along at first but then to just go full blackwing was weird?

Yeah I could see Netflix picking it up for S3

they dropped massive star Kevin Spacey from one of their biggest international hits. you sure they'd want to get directly into business with Landis?

Well, people have heard of Kevin Spacey.

Also worth noting that while Bright seems to have been a hit and there's a sequel planned, Landis is apparently not going to be involved.

Wait, what did Max Landis do?

https://www.thedailybeast.com/bright-screenwriter-max-landis-accused-of-sexual-assault

dammit max landis what is wrong with you

Him too, eh? Well, fuck him and let's hope the rest of the team can carry S3