Hoopy!

September 21, 2004 4:25 PM

New Hitchhiker's BBC radio series debuted today. I managed to miss it but one can listen online starting Thursday. Previously discussed here.
posted by CunningLinguist (15 comments total)

I did hear it and it was great! Brought back warm fuzzy memories of hearing repeats of the first phases as a kid. They sound just as I remember to earlier episodes sounding - especially Marvin and Zaphod. Wish I'd know it was coming, I'd have re-read the first couple of books as a refresher.

Still, good to see the BBC doing what no commercial broadcaster would. And to think I grumble about paying £100 a year? Hell, I'd pay double that for an annual subscription to the Today programme . /wanding off topic
posted by dmt at 4:41 PM on September 21, 2004

Totally froody.
posted by pokeydonut at 4:49 PM on September 21, 2004

Cheers for this
posted by Pretty_Generic at 6:02 PM on September 21, 2004

Freee-ow! Thanks, I would have been really disappointed if I had missed this.
posted by Galvatron at 7:02 PM on September 21, 2004

42M mp3 file.. belgium!
posted by MrLint at 7:43 PM on September 21, 2004

Something that hasn't been clear to me: is this a straight up full cast adaptation of Life, The Universe, and Everything, or does it actually pick up where the original radio series ended (which is quite different from the ending of The Restaurant At the End of the Universe)?

I suppose I could wait until Thursday to find out, but I've never really gotten the hang of Thursdays.
posted by PinkStainlessTail at 8:13 PM on September 21, 2004

It's Life, the Universe, and Everything, if not quite "straight up". I was trying to follow things in the book and the adaptation does jump back and forth quite a lot in order to keep all the stories bubbling along nicely, and tell them in dialogue rather than narrative. Trillian did get a line accusing Zaphod of having "hallucinations" which might have been an attempt to explain series 2 away. Anyway, it was great fun.
posted by rbrwr at 11:17 PM on September 21, 2004

A little too close to the book? The format seemed to have been tortured a little to get in all the good writing, while Adams' own stuff shows he had a much better grasp of the differences between the two media.

And an appalling attempt to pretend series two didn't happen.
posted by monkey closet at 2:19 AM on September 22, 2004

Series two was pretty lame, IMHO. I listened to it a couple of months back and I thought 'I don't remember it being this poor'.

I caught this first episode and it was much funnier than anything in the last series - several laugh-out-loud moments = success.

Pretending series two didn't happen sounds less than a bad idea to me. </controversial>
posted by Blue Stone at 5:34 AM on September 22, 2004

Series 2????? Of what do you people speak?
posted by CunningLinguist at 6:08 AM on September 22, 2004

Series 2????? Of what do you people speak?

There were 12 total episodes of the original radio series: the first 6 are series 1, the seventh ep was a "Christmas special" (though not actually about Christmas), and the last 5 are series 2. Eps 1-6 are fairly close to the plot of the first book. 7-12 have many elements from the second book, but diverge significantly in several places, including the ending.

Blue Stone, that's actually not a very controversial stance in hitchhiker's fandom (especially since Douglas himself described the series as long and full of blah), though I for one quite liked it.
posted by PinkStainlessTail at 6:33 AM on September 22, 2004

Series 2 had some nice bits, but I get the impression that it was mainly shafted by the fact the Adams' well documented approach to deadlines meant that a lot of it was written seconds before it was recorded, so it lacks a lot of coherence.

What got me about the 'tertiary phase' approach to it, though, was the lame idea that the secondary was all a Beeblebrox hallucination...
posted by monkey closet at 6:36 AM on September 22, 2004

Found on Slashdot: you can listen now at:

rtsp://rmv8.bbc.net.uk/radio4/comedy/tue1830.ra

though it's buffering like a mother...
posted by PinkStainlessTail at 7:14 AM on September 22, 2004

If you go into Real 10 player's preferences> playback settings> In the box for 'On Demand (not live) Internet clips' if you click the two boxes, it'll cache the stream and pause it at the start, which - if you give it a little while to stream ahead - will get rid of all buffering.

Now I come to think of it ... by saying the last series was a hallucination, they're saying the Total Perspective Vortex was a fantasy. Now I think I'm angry.

I think I'll just forget they said it was a hallucination, and forget that I forgot that. That suits me better.

Whatever I meant by "that".

What was I talking about?
posted by Blue Stone at 10:12 AM on September 22, 2004

Perfect timing - just picked up my 'IT IS 42' vanity plates at the DMV yesterday, and what better way to celebrate than by listening to the new series?
posted by mschmidt at 3:42 PM on September 22, 2004