The Stage

Enfield to star in Radio 4’s Dirk Gently adaptation

Published Friday 13 July 2007 at 16:10 by Matthew Hemley

Harry Enfield is to star as Douglas Adams’ detective Dirk Gently in a six-part adaptation for BBC Radio 4.

Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency is being made by independent production company Above the Title, which also dramatised Adams’ final three books in the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy series for BBC Radio 4.

Enfield will be joined by Lord of the Rings actor Billy Boyd and Peep Show’s Olivia Colman.

The series is being directed by Dirk Maggs and focuses on Gently’s bid to save the human race from extinction after being drawn into a 4-billion-year-old mystery.

Other cast members include I’m Alan Partridge’s Felicity Montagu and Drop the Dead Donkey’s Robert Duncan.

BBC Radio 4 said the Dirk Gently novels reflect “Douglas’s unique and funny take on matters as wide-ranging as consciousness, conservation, man’s place in the cosmos and crime”.

The series begins in October and will have its own dedicated web pages featuring trailers, photographs, production diaries and competitions. A further two series are expected to follow.