By Joshua Kaye
As one of the most exciting shows to make its premiere on BBC America this year, Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency looks like it’s going to be a wild, bizarre ride filled with blood, adventure, and of course, corgis. Or maybe just the one, but one is perfectly fine. Based on the series written by the legendary Douglas Adams (who you most definitely know because of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy), the series follows Dirk Gently, a time-traveling “holistic detective” and his sidekick Todd Brotzman who really wants nothing to do with what Dirk intends on getting him into. Nerd Reactor had the chance at New York Comic Con to sit at a round table with Dirk Gently himself Samuel Barnett, executive producers Max Landis and Robert Cooper, and co-stars Hannah Marks, Fiona Dourif, Mpho Koaho, and Jade Eshete.
In talking about getting the chance to produce Dirk Gently, Landis mentions that while he has nothing ill to say about the previous series starring Stephen Mangan, he makes it a point to say that it just wasn’t Dirk Gently, and compares it more to shows like, “Psych, or Monk, something more like a quirky detective show.” Landis continues, saying “Our goal was to do something a little truer to the genre of the books than the previous show. Not an improvement, just something more different and closer to the books.”
When asked about the characters that each actor plays, it begins to become clear that Dirk Gently isn’t your average sort of show. In fact, the more that each actor says about their character the more you begin to wonder, “What in the hell am I getting myself into?” For example, in describing her character Bart, Fiona Dourif says, “Bart is a kind of lonely girl who happened to have been born as the delete key of the universe. So it’s my calling to kill people and I’m killing them because they’re supposed to be killed.”
Hannah Marks does her best to top Fiona in talking about her character Amanda and her fake disease known as Pararibulitis. She describes Pararabilutis as a “nerve disease”, but it comes with hallucinations and I’m always hallucinating that I’m in life or death situations. In the first episode, I believe I’m being stabbed to death by my drumsticks that turn into butcher knives but it feels real since my nerves are firing off like crazy. Every single episode is really high stakes for me because I believe that I’m dying everywhere I go.”
From watching the clips and trailer of Dirk Gently, it really looks like something BBC America has never really tackled before. Speaking of the tone, Landis goes big with his comparisons, describing it as, “…if The Big Lebowski was written by Douglas Adams. Ideally, on its best day, it is that. Even on its worst day, it’s if Inherent Vice was Doctor Who. That’s the tone, that’s the vibe, it’s structured like Game of Thrones where you’re following an incredible amount of disparate characters. Dirk and Todd are the main characters of the show, but you wouldn’t necessarily know that by the end of episode five.”
Regarding the tone of the show, Samuel Barnett (who plays the titular character), states that after seeing the first three episodes of the show that he “has not seen anything else like it on TV before.” Jade Eshete continues off that saying, “You can’t categorize it into a specific genre! You have your comedy, you have your drama, you have your sci-fi, your supernatural, and violence! Gore! There’s a lot of blood.”
From the sound of it, Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency sounds like it’s going to be a one-of-a-kind thrill ride with a bit of everything to enjoy. It’s clear the Max Landis wants to make a show that Douglas Adams would be proud of and the cast that’s been assembled are clearly on board with his vision. You can check out Dirk Gently’s season premiere this Saturday on BBC America at 9:00PM.
from Nerd Reactor
0 comments: