BBC plans DIRK GENTLY TV series

The UK website Chortle is reporting that the BBC is planning to make a TV series based on Douglas Adams' novels about Dirk Gently, the Holistic Detective.

Literary agent Ed Victor, who represents the author’s estate revealed the news at a Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy celebration in central London.

He said he had seen ‘a great script – not just a good script’ for the planned adaptation, but warned: ‘With the BBC, it can take forever’.

He said the producer attached to the project – thought to be former Cosby Show executive Caryn Mandabach – described the novels as ‘the greatest storytelling opportunity for television since Star Trek’.

No word on whether this would be a "series" in the British sense of six or so episodes adapting Adams' work directly, or an ongoing, Doctor Who-style series telling new stories set in the Gently world.

Victor also says the BBC is mulling a remake of Adams' Hitchhikers's Guide to the Galaxy, but that the project is taking forever and would involve securing the rights from Disney. It's hard to imagine them improving on the original TV version (Simon Jones is Arthur Dent, now and forever), but I'd still be glad to see them go ahead with it if only to wash the last traces of that movie version from my brain. Good lord, that thing hurt like Vogon poetry.

Got a tip for Monsters and Rockets? Want to contribute to the site? Send us an email.