480 The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy

First  viewed :  2  February  1981

Back  to  comedy  again  but  this  was  much  more  like  it.

The  Hitchhiker's  Guide  To  The  Galaxy   was  originally  a  radio  comedy  series  on  Radio  Four  written  by  Douglas  Adams  a  comic  writer   who'd  had  a  peripheral  involvement  in  the  last  series  of  Monty  Python's  Flying  Circus  but  was  otherwise  struggling  for  recognition. It  polarised  the  audience  at  first  but  was  regularly  repeated  and  its  reputation  grew. As  we  always  had  Radio  Four  on  in  the  house  I  caught  snatches  of  it  but  never  really  gave  it  much  attention.

Adapting  it  for  television  was  a  major  challenge  given  the  BBC's  famously  limited  budget  for  special  effects  and  some  fans  of  the  radio  series  at  school  doubted  it  could  be  done. That  may  be  why  I  didn't  tune  in  for  the  first  four  episodes  when  it  was  first  broadcast  on  BBC 2.  When  I  joined  it  in  Episode  5  I  was  hooked  immediately  and  fortunately  it  was  repeated  on  BBC  1  almost  straight  away   when  we  all  watched  it.

Adams  was  happy  to  adapt  the  radio  scripts  and  the   six-part  TV  series  roughly  followed  the  first  six  episodes  on  radio. Susan  Sheridan  who  played  Trillian, the  only  female  role  was   primarily  a  voice  actress  and  was  replaced  by  Sandra  Dickinson, lovely  in  a  revealing  red  outfit . Geoffrey  McGivern  was  less  happy  about  being  replaced  by  David  Dixon  as  Ford  Prefect  but  he  didn't  look  the  part. Otherwise  the  cast  was  the  same.

Arthur  Dent  , played  magnificently  by  Simon  Jones  as  a  hapless, middle  class  Everyman, discovers  that  his  friend  Ford  Prefect  is  really  an  alien  journalist  updating  an  intergalactic  travel  guide. But  Ford  has  more  to  tell  ; the  Earth  is  about  to  be  destroyed  to  facilitate  a  bypass. He  takes  Arthur  on  a  dizzying  ride  through  the  universe  accompanied   by  his  two-headed  cousin  Zaphod  Beeblebrox  ( Mark  Wing-Davey )  his  girlfriend  Trillian  ( herself  an  Earthling ) and  a  depressed  robot , Marvin  the  Paranoid  Android  ( Stephen  Moore ) . The  narrative  is  constantly  interrupted  by  relevant  excerpts  from  the  Guide  itself  voiced  by  veteran  comic  actor  Peter  Jones.

The  script  is  so  rich  it  bears  repeated  viewing; there's  always  something  you  didn't  catch  last  time  round. Beneath  the  surface  though  there  are  deeper  philosophical  concerns. Adams  was  a  convinced  atheist  and  God  gets  peremptorily  dismissed "in  a  puff  of  logic". His  own  view  of  the  chaotic  nature  of  the  universe  is  expressed  in  the  very  melancholic   final  episode  when  the  question  and  answer  to  "life, the  universe  and  everything"  don't  match  up; even  the  laws  of  mathematics  are  suspect.

As  with  all  science  fiction  of  the  seventies, the  future  has  caught  up  with  it  to  some  extent. The  Guide  is  basically  a  smartphone  app  and  the  graphics  used  to  accompany  it  now  look  very  quaint  though  still  clever  and  imaginative  and  of  course,  all  the  computers  are  much  larger  than  the  one  I'm  using  to  enter  this  piece.

A  second  series  was  mooted  but  Adams  and  the  BBC  couldn't  agree  on  the script  and  it  never  happened. I  didn't  like  idea  of  a  film version  ( 2005 ); I  didn't  see  how  this  could  be  improved  so  have  avoided  it.