The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
dir. Garth Jennings (2005)
Depressingly close to being really, really good. The Vogons are top-notch and the reworked characterisations have much to offer. Ironically, though, while the newly scripted scenes are vintage Adams, a great deal of slavishly reproduced old material fails to hit the mark.
So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish
by Douglas Adams (Pan, 1984); audiobook read by Martin Freeman (Macmillan, 2012)
The ideas, as ever, are ingenious, and Adams is at the top of his game in reuniting Arthur Dent with the erstwhile-destroyed Planet Earth. The story, however, such as it is, hitchhikes half-heartedly while secretly yearning to become a Dirk Gently novel.
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Live at the Almeida Theater, London, 1995
by Douglas Adams (Phoenix Books, 2008)
The greater part of this reading (or more accurately, performance) comes in the form of two long excerpts from Life, the Universe and Everything. Suddenly that which seems facetious on the page springs to life and we hear what Adams himself intended.
The Restaurant at the End of the Universe
by Douglas Adams (Pan, 1980); audiobook read by Douglas Adams (BBC, 1990)
Like the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy before it, the Restaurant at the End of the Universe is a satirical explosion of SF ideas, its brilliant droll humour being marred (this time around) only by Adams’ determinedly facetious approach to prose narrative.
Life, the Universe and Everything
by Douglas Adams (MacMillan Audio, 2006) [First published by Pan, 1982]
read by Martin Freeman
Reprising the vast zaniness and existential satire of the original Hitchhiker’s duology, Adams ups his trademark discursiveness, redoubles his protagonists’ fecklessness and yet achieves an oddly cohesive transcendence (while Martin Freeman’s delivery makes a virtue of Adams’ sometimes facetious approach to prose).