Back in August of 2014, Max Landis—the writer of Chronicle, American Ultra, and a lot of tweets and blog posts about what Max Landis would do if he was given control of this or that popular franchise—announced that he was starting work on a TV adaptation of Douglas Adams’ Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency. Two years later, we’ve finally got our first look at the extremely excitable show, which seems to be all about convincing the viewer of the fundamental interconnectedness of all things via the holistic method of shouting at them at both high volume and length.
Starring Penny Dreadful’s Samuel Barnett as Gently, and Elijah Wood as his reluctant sidekick—screaming “I am not your Watson, asshole!” at his erstwhile partner—the series is certainly energetic. But it remains to be seen whether the BBC Four and BBC America show will be able to capture the clockwork precision that made Adams’ original novel such a tightly plotted comic masterpiece, or whether, like Max Landis rambling at you at a Hollywood cocktail party about what he’d do with Footloose, it’ll ultimately lose the plot.
Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency debuts on October 22.