4 out of 5

Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective agency – Douglas Adams other “series” of books (sadly only 2) about a detective who solves crimes “holistically” by examining the fundamental “interconnectedness of all things” to figure out who killed whom or what not – which, in typical Adams winking fashion – essentially boils down to tossing random minutiae into a pot and saying, “Well, both of these are blue, and yesterday I saw a man wearing blue…” and assuming that following that trail from “connected” point to connected point will lead to your solution.

And in the books and show – it does.  Most entertainingly.

I can’t say I had a picture in my mind of Gently when reading the books, by Steve Mangan does an excellent job of balancing the character as part bumbling and part incredibly intelligent, half-worried he’s fudging everything but overly-half confident that he knows exactly what he’s doing the whole time.  Equally well cast is his “assistant” Richard MacDuff – played by Darren Boyd – who has another balancing challenge, one of a man who digs the detective gig, wants to believe in the genius of Gently, but wants to walk away from it every moment of every day.  Both actors have these nicely will-he won’t-he scale-tipping roles that keep the show (as short-lived as it was) from feeling it could easily settle into a format of “and this week our detectives…”

The series – a pilot and three episodes – probably would’ve fizzled out quickly regardless of it having fizzled out quickly because writing holistic mysteries seems rather difficult, and they really one capitalize on the concept in 2 out of the 4 episodes, the other 2 keying in more on the oddities that Mangan attracts in his life and finding quirky or strange sci-fi-ish mysteries for the crew to solve, but not ones that necessarily use Gently’s skills.  But the positive swing of this is that after getting the concept of interconnectedness established, the writers skillfully start to flesh out our characters, and how the agency runs, and what Gently and crew look like outside of work, which, again, would’ve left a lot of room for a show that didn’t just get lazy an rely on a predictable series of events for every episode.

Some of the humor – typically British – takes a while to hit home, the pacing being rather quick, and the mood can hover just at the serious line sometimes, so you only find yourself laughing after the second or so viewing when you know what directions things are going.  You can’t help but wish for more episodes, but these 4 being as solid as they are leaves for a nice memory of what could’ve been… and perhaps saves us from, eh, what could’ve been.