Fuddland

In case you’ve not heard already [and I only found out by accident, sometime last month, that it was happening]: starting earlier this week, BBC Radio 4 is broadcasting brand new episodes of the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy!

Most of the original cast are back — sadly, several members have died over the twenty-two years since the last episode, but the replacements seem more than up to the job. Perhaps strangest of all is the fact that Douglas Adams himself, despite passing away in 2001, fills one of the role, having recorded readings from the novels sometime in the past.

What’s particularly impressive is that these new episodes are being recorded and can be listened-to [over the web, at least] in 5.1 surround sound. Let me tell you, listening to Arthur and Ford dashing about my room, from one corner to another to another, chasing a flying sofa which has washed up on prehistoric Earth due to eddies in the space-time continuum, is a very odd experience indeed — but a joyous one nonetheless.

I’ve been a fan of the Hitchhiker’s Guide for as long as I can remember: although I missed the original radio broadcasts [not my fault, I was only one year old when they were first made], my older brother borrowed the first six episodes from the local library in the early Eighties, on LP, which we [sssh, don’t tell] taped before giving back. They soon became staples for long car journeys, and at some point we were given the scripts to read along [“Hey, they don’t say exactly what’s written here in this bit!”].

The television series came next for me — I didn’t read the books until sometime in my teens — and I actually was a little bit disappointed. My young mind couldn’t understand why they didn’t cast Geoffrey McGivern as Ford, instead opting for David Dixon, and why they bizarrely decided that the character of Trillian, with her degree in mathematics and doctorate in astrophysics, should be a peroxide-blonde in tight, revealing, red PVC and fishnet stockings, played by Sandra Dickenson. Despite these [in my view] mis-castings, when I watch it now I admit it has a certain charm and they did well with whatever budget they were given. I’ll obviously have to try and put aside my unshakeable views on who should play whom when it comes to the film due out next year, but I think it will be so different from the original story that it won’t be as wince-inducing to hear other people speaking the lines differently from how I expect them to be spoken.

When I finally got round to reading them, the books added a whole new dimension or ten to the world Adams had already created, fleshing out and bolting on new things to the existing story, then extrapolating the adventures way beyond anything I was expecting.

A few years ago I got hold of the entire first two radio series in MP3 format, and unlike other childhood favourites for which we retain a nostalgic love that turn out to be ever so naff when we revist them as adults, they were still as good as I remembered them to be. I’m not sure who got the ball rolling on these new episodes, but if the first one is anything to go by, every single person involved is a real fan of the original, and by ‘eck it’s good to hear those familiar voices again. Roll on Episode Two.

#1

Cathy | 2004 / 09 / 24 – 11:58

My absolute favourite part came right at the end, after all the credits:

“Non-orthopedically-sprung life-forms are reminded that mattresses are the only sentient creatures to require regular flolloping.”

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