The new Hitchhikers radio series

The legend is back !
"Above the tittle" and Radio 4 will bring us a third, fourth and fifth
Hitchhiker's radio series.

Right now, we've only got all the informations we ever wanted about the third series that has been broadcasted, with a huge success, in September and October 2005.

The fourth and fifth radio series have been recorded in January 2005 and will be broadcasted from the 3rd May 2005.

The new radio series : the return of a legend !

The idea to make a third radio series came up in 1993. The Head of Spoken Word Publishing at BBC Worldwilde was quite impressed by the figures : 75.000 tapes and CDs of the original series has then been sold. Douglas said yes, if the BBC got that talented young man aboard : Dirk Maggs, a successful radio drama director and producer. Dirk made a lot of shows ranging from Agatha Christie adaptations to Superman stories. Like Douglas, his approach to audio production is very different from the old radio drama school. It definitly sounds more like a rock album than a typical BBC show.

So when Douglas and Dirk finally met Douglas at Duncan Terrace one spring day (MJ Simpson "Hitchhiker", Coronet), they were both very happy at the perspective to work together. But Douglas was not very keen to write the script himself, so they asked the radio writer Alick Rowe to do the job. Sadly, Douglas was not happy at all with the scripts. He then wrote ten pages of the first episode but gave up. One year later, the project was on hold... and finally forgotten.

As Dirk Maggs told me, "later in in 1997 Douglas and I discussed restarting the process with me writing the scripts, and we were going to proceed on that basis but then the Disney movie deal came through. So the whole thing stalled again until Douglas's tragic death. After getting over the shock I realized that the film project was still not happening and rather than have no effort made to keep Douglas' work alive, I proposed we try again - and at last here is the result. "

So Dirk Maggs worked on Hitchhikers again, wrote some new scripts, according Douglas' instructions and notes, using new material specially written by Douglas for these sequels. A difficult problem was of course to link the second radio series with "Life, the Universe and Evertything". Dirk Maggs found a solution : "I assumed that maybe the second radio series - which revolved around Zaphod's encounters with Zarniwoop - could have been the result of one pan galacticgargleblaster too many ... it's simplistic but it cuts across a lot of potential problems".

An other good news is that, 25 years later, part of the original cast will still be there with Simon Jones (Arthur), Stephen Moore (Marvin), Susan Sheridan (Trillian), Geoffrey McGivern (Ford) and Mark Wing-Davey (Zaphod). Sadly, Peter Jones (the Book), David Tate (Eddie the computer) and Richard Vernon (Slartibartfast) passed away. They are replaced by : Willyam Franklin, Richard Griffiths, Roger Gregg.

The musics used in the program were created for the series by Paul Wix Wickens (Douglas Adams' friend and Paul McCartney musical director) and Phil Pope. So no more Ligeti, Terence Riley, Eno and others whose musics were used during the first series.

"Above The Title Productions", managed by Bruce Hyman and Helen Chattwell, got the deal to produce the new radio series for Radio 4, and brought the dream to reality.

"Life, the Universe and Everything", a new six part series, has been recorded in November 03, and has been broadcasted in September and October 04.

"So long and thanks for all the fish" and "Mostly harmless" has been recorded in January of 05, and ran as a single eight-week block from the 3rd May 05.

All the three new phases are now avalaible in the shops in CDs or tapes with some extra stuff. The release of an Audio DVD is still considered very seriously. Dirk Magg's scripts are also avalaible as a very complete book since the summer 05 (Pan books).