News Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy coming to Hulu

A new adaptation of the classic Douglas Adams series is coming to Hulu.

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/live-feed/hitchhikers-guide-galaxy-series-works-at-hulu-1226725

Between its upcoming Marvel content, Veronica Mars season 4 and the upcoming season of the Orville, Hulu is becoming my favorite streaming service.

 

I'd love to be excited, but the only thing that's come close to the original radio series for me is the novels.

Fingers crossed...

 

I'd be surprised if they nail this one but at the same time I'm sure to check it out all the same. I imagine many others feel the same so regardless of whether it's good this is probably a good choice for Hulu because it's probably guaranteed that it will get viewers to watch it at least once, whether they come back is another story.

 

The only thing that has me worried is the unavoidable absence of any involvement from Douglas Adams.

 

Underneath the hilarious gags and delightfully whimsical fancies, the the soul of the H2G2 trilogy is their wry, quintessentially British fatalism, which is a bad fit for the two-hour blockbuster model. This explains why the 2005 movie is perfect in many moments (the transformation into yarn figures, Bill Nighy's cameo), yet leaves a hollow taste. A series of bite-sized episodes, in which the comedy and fatalism can balance each other out without the need for a heroic macro narrative, is probably the only way to do the property justice in screen form.

Here's hoping Stephen Fry returns to voice The Guide.

 

It's not their fault he won't return an email.

 

This has the potential of being very good. Call me cautiously optimistic.

I initially hated the 2005 film but it has grown on me over the years, largely because it's so well cast and makes the story its own without trying to be the film version of the books versions of the audios (with the original TV series mixed in there somewhere).

 

I thought the BBC TV miniseries was pretty well-done, for the most part. Certainly the animations of the Guide entries were iconic. Trillian was terribly miscast, though.

 

Yes and no. Trillian was all wrong, Zaphod's extra head too. I didn't like the design for Marvin, and it all looked a bit 'BBC budget'.

But I loved the cast and liked the animations a lot.

 

That's part of its appeal for me, that BBC sci-fi flavo(u)r that it shared with Doctor Who and Blake's 7. It even had the same composer as a lot of '80s Who, Paddy Kingsland.

And Gaith was talking above about its "quintessentially British" appeal -- what could be more quintessentially British for sci-fi television than stagey BBC production values?

 

I struggle at times with Who and Blakes too - two shows I love.

Even at the time I wished Gerry Anderson had made them. His shows still look pretty damned good but he needed better scripts.

 

I'm a big fan of the book, TV series, and the movie, so I'm very curious to see how Hulu handles it. I wonder if this does well enough if we could see them continue on the other book?

 

Adams is just spending eternity dead for tax purposes... He'll be back after a quick trip to the Restaurant at the end of the Universe!

 

The yarn thing in the movie was stupid. If the improbability drive can act on the crew it's too dangerous to even use.

I love the direction the radio show goes after they leave Milliways. I get why the TV show could not go there at the time, but it would be relative easy to portray what that version did with modern VFX. Sadly I expect they will follow the books.

 

Umm, this is a comedy universe where whole planets get casually demolished to make way for highway construction. There are a thousand things in it that are too dangerous to use, and people's lives are constantly endangered by the incompetence of the technology or the callousness of the system. That's part of the joke.

Besides, the Infinite Improbability Drive always acted on the crew. "My legs are drifting off into the sunset... hell, my left arm's come off too, how am I going to operate my digital watch now? Ford, you're turning into a penguin, stop it."

 

Love the books, watched the cheesy BBC production and loved it and except for the parts that were obviously non-Adams, I liked the movie.

"Cautiously optimistic" is an excellent way of putting it.

But I will miss Allan Rickman as the voice of Marvin. He was perfect in the roll.

 

Amazon made Good Omens work, with the right people running it it can work. I’d love to see a series get farther into the books. I’d love to meet Wonko the Sane, shame that David Bowie left our plane of existence and can’t play him.

 

Good Omens worked so well because Neil Gaiman basically showran the whole thing. Not saying that Hulu can't make it work, but it requires a showrunner dedicated to making the spirit of the originals transition to TV.

 

Put me down as hopeful but highly sceptical.

On the one hand I have a lot of affection for the material so any way to introduce it to a new audience feels like a win, but on the other there's already been so many iterations (none of which can really be said to be at all "definitive" since they all bounced off each other over the years) that I'm not sure that a new one could bring anything new to the table other than nicer looking special effects.
Plus of course, Adams had such a unique and distinct voice that I have a hard time seeing anyone else do this faithfully without it coming off like a hollow imitation.

 

A "unique and distinct voice" that was largely inspired by Robert Sheckley. Adams was building on the work of someone before him, so someone after him could theoretically build on his work just as well.