BBC4 presents: Dirk Gently and the Dead Bunny of Doubt
Thursday, August 26th, 2010
Okay, so, yesterday, I read in the Guardian that the BBC will broadcast an adaptation of Douglas Adams’s ‘Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency.’
Which is great news. I’m a big fan of Douglas Adams and, though I’m sure the vast majority of the Adams Appreciation Society will call it sacrilege, I rate his two Dirk Gently novels even higher than the five parts of his Hitchhiker’s trilogy. Five, yes, not six: Fuck off, Eoin Colfer.
Right, sorry about that. So, great news, only slightly – okay, wildly – spoilt by the announcement, in the same article, that said channel will also do an opera based on a dead Playboy model:
“BBC4 is to broadcast an opera based on the turbulent life of the former Playboy model, Anna Nicole Smith. Anna Nicole – The Opera will dramatise the life of Smith, who married oil tycoon J Howard Marshall, more than 60 years her senior, in 1994 and then after his death the following year was drawn into a lengthy legal battle over the settlement of his estate. Smith died of a prescription drugs overdose in 2007, aged 39.”
How nice.
By the way, the fact that the book of one of the most popular writers in his field (a field of one, most of his ardent fans would claim) was only mentioned as an aside in the above article, of which the leading photo and headline solely dealt with the late ‘model’, would probably have made Douglas Adams smile…
… and the following quote by BBC4 controller, Richard Klein, would have the wry bones of the creator of Arthur Dent et al rolling in his grave – with laughter:
“BBC4 is the channel that seeks to offer television to those parts of the brain that other television channels don’t reach.
Indeed.
‘I love the smell of napalm in the morning’ doesn’t quite have the same je ne sais quoi as ‘I love the smell of exhumed bunny meat’.
It would make for a great corporate slogan, though: ‘BBC Zombie4, going for those parts of the brain others don’t reach.’



















