Admirable film.

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

Actress is magnificent and exudes a hypnotic screen presence in this affecting drama.

This live action production of Douglas Adams' book is an excellent example of taking source material and turning into a new thing. The show retained all of it's original harmony with the original themes and added to them in a very enjoyable way.If you look at the low scoring reviews, you'd be forgiven for thinking this would be a badly done production. But that's not the case. The reviewers are simply forgetting that all new works are derivative and if we were to be truly faithful we could just have an hour of teletext showing pages from the book instead.The story is holistically interconnected with the modern world (which Adams' loved) and the original stories. A perfect adaptation.

Douglas Adams wrote the brilliant 'The Hitchikers' Guide to the Galaxy' and then, arguably, struggled to produce anything else that quite matched: the Dirk Gently novels (there were a couple), about an unlikely detective, were one of his subsequent projects. Brought to T.V., they share some of the weakness of the books: not as zanily crazy as his first work, but hardly deep enough to work as real drama. But there are still some funny moments in this adaptation, although it's set in the present day and is arguably more "inspired by" than a literal translation of the original. Still, something of the spirit of the author shines through, arguably more so than in the hyperactive 'Hitchkikers' film of a couple of years ago.

I've been a long time fan of all things Adamsy, slightly disappointed with the movie version of HGTTG, somehow i expected it to be better than the TV series in relation to the extra amount spent, so i was wondering what they'd done with this.I already knew this was going to follow the characters but not the actual story line of the book.In the end i thought they pulled it off pretty well. Mangan is well cast as Dirk, it's all rather quirky, Dirk comes across as a total charlatan just as i imagined him from the books.I wonder if they'll make a series? I hope so. Keep it short so you don't run out of ideas and lets hope they make a better job of trying to recreate Douglas sense of humour than Eoin Colfer did with 'And Another Thing'

My personal belief is that a book is a book and a TV production is a TV production - not much point in comparing two widely divergent media. If you already have a strong picture in your mind's eye you will almost inevitably be disappointed by someone else's concept. I must admit Steven Mangan was not the first actor that sprang to mind when I considered who might make a fine Dirk Gently,but he has a hypnotic quality,almost frightening in his intensity.The sublime Darren Boyd plays his reluctant Watson, a master class in non - acting as opposed to Mangan's occasional scenery chewing. The convoluted plot revolves around a time machine and a lost cat with the casual elegance Mr Adams was revered for. Gently is proved right in his theory that everything is interconnected,cons 20 grand off his Watson and disappears to Bermuda. The beautiful Helen Blaxendale shines as Darren Boyd's girlfriend. But for me,the star of "Dirk Gently" was the great Miss Doreen Mantle. Tragically she was killed off at the end so if they do decide to make a series it might take an imagination of Adams - like proportions to bring her back.