The iconic Sci-fi cult classic, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, is back with a new Radio Show to celebrate it’s 40th Anniversary
There is heated debate amongst fans about which version of Douglas Adams’ classic comedy space-epic is the best, but most agree that the radio series first broadcast in 1978 has the edge. Long a cult classic, the fan favourite is set to return to the airwaves in 2018, featuring one of the biggest comedy stars on the books here at top talent agency MN2S, Lenny Henry.
Written by Douglas Adams, a prolific author and dramatist, the series chronicles the fortunes of Arthur Dent, the only human to survive the destruction of Earth (through luck, rather than wit.)
He is rescued from Earth, which is facing imminent destruction, by Ford Prefect, a friend who he had presumed to be human, but who is actually an alien, writing the entry for Earth in the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Ford named himself after a common variant of what he assumed to be the dominant lifeform on the planet – cars.
What to expect from The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy Radio Series?
Although the radio show was the first adaptation of BBC The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, it was followed by books, stage shows, comic books, a TV adaptation and a feature length film. In each variation, elements of the story were adapted, either by Adams himself or by the production team. What remained constant were the characters of Trillian (Dent’s love interest), Zaphrod Beeblerox (former President of the Galaxy) and Marvin the Paranoid Android (a robot with a brain the size of a planet.)
The combination of Douglas Adams’ surreal sense of humour and the plot-driven comedic storylines made the first radio series a smash hit, which was re-broadcast twice in the first year that it was released. A second series was recorded the following year, and the resulting recordings have become national treasures.
Keen fans have lots of in-jokes around the series, based on jokes in or passages from The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. The entry on towels, for instance, reads: “A towel, [The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy] says, is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitchhiker can have.
“Partly it has great practical value. You can wrap it around you for warmth as you bound across the cold moons of Jaglan Beta; you can lie on it on the brilliant marble-sanded beaches of Santraginus V, inhaling the heady sea vapors; you can sleep under it beneath the stars which shine so redly on the desert world of Kakrafoon; use it to sail a mini raft down the slow heavy River Moth; wet it for use in hand-to-hand-combat; wrap it round your head to ward off noxious fumes or avoid the gaze of the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal (such a mind-boggingly stupid animal, it assumes that if you can’t see it, it can’t see you); you can wave your towel in emergencies as a distress signal, and of course dry yourself off with it if it still seems to be clean enough.”
This cult following means that the new adaptation will have a ready-made audience, although the producers will be hoping to reach a new generation, too. The latest addition to the Hitchhiker’s universe will be based on ‘And Another Thing’, a posthumous sequel to Adams’ works written by Eoin Colfer, as well as some of Douglas Adams’ unused material.
The series (directed by Dirk Maggs for BBC Radio 4) will air next spring, more than a decade after the previous instalment of the series.
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