Adams' Dirk Gently Serialized on BBC Radio

happy monday writes "Douglas Adams' 'Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency' is being serialised by BBC Radio, starring Harry Enfield. The first episode can be listened to on Radio 4's website now." The Times has a fairly glowing review of the program, and (for US folks like myself) some incomprehensible British-isms to boot.

Comments

Britishisms?

[toby]

Being British myself, and having modified my own communications to fit North American cultural scopes, I decided to scan the review for these claimed "Britishisms". A North American may be forgiven for not knowing who Kenny Everett is - although he certainly was broadcast as far afield as the former British colony Australia (now a military and cultural outpost of the USA) - but apart from that, what are the other impenetrable Britishisms?

Can't be bidet - a strictly Continental idea; "serendipitous" is surely common usage by now, though coined of course by a Brit; Chris Moyles - well who cares - one can assume he's the UK's Michael Richards - ditto; Boswell and Dr Johnson are simply subjects of general knowledge; Ravel is no Pom and his Boléro no English hymn; ah, Jeremy Clarkson, there you may have a point, laddie. Cholmondeley-Warner is just a television character, innit. Anything else?

Re:Britishisms?

[fsmunoz]

Australia is a military and cultural outpost of the USA? Wow, nice troll.

I don't think it was a troll, just an exageration to convey an image, an hyperbole if you will. I'm sure that the parent poster would say something along the same lines about the UK, just as I will happily (or not) say somthing about my own country in the same vein. Consider it a tongue in cheeck remark about the almost inevitable influence the US has all over.

Re:Britishisms?

[david.given]

I think the Lib Dems have two main things going for them: firstly, given half a chance they're going to push for electoral reform, which this country urgently needs; and secondly, they're really good at winding up the other two parties and pointing out the things they'd rather people not notice. So despite the fact that they're unlikely ever to gain power, and probably would do really badly if they ever did make it, I still think they're really useful.

It would still be nice to have a real government, though.

Oh good, RealPlayer

[svunt]

National broadcasters using these formats..tsk tsk - I'm an Aussie, and hate having wmv or mp4 only for video download from the ABC, but RealPlayer? Yuk! Poor Brits.

Re:Oh good, RealPlayer

[resequenced]

VLC plays the stream just fine. There's even a handy "Listen using stand-alone Real Player" link; you don't have to muck through HTML or anything. Real Audio wouldn't be my first choice, but the quality is pretty good, all things considered.

Re:Oh good, RealPlayer

[martin-boundary]

The Realplayer format is actually pretty decent compression wise. Of course, you should never use the standard realplayer viewing software for this. The best method I know uses MPlayer:

1) Open a terminal and type the following:
mplayer -dumpstream -dumpfile dirk.ra rtsp://rmv8.bbc.net.uk/radio4/comedy/wed1830.ra

2) Wait about 30 seconds, then open another terminal and play the file dirk.ra from disk while it's still downloading:
mplayer dirk.ra

This has two benefits: you can put the stream in your collection (maybe convert to ogg later etc), and you won't get the annoying buffering pauses.

This method also works with realvideo files, and wmv urls (mms://) if you want to save those types of movies. Finally, note that MPlayer lets you skip around an audio or video file, even if the file says you can't fast forward in other GUI oriented video players.

Re:Oh good, RealPlayer

[Peet42]

If you're on Windows, and using the BBC site, follow their "Get Realplayer" links.

Before the BBC standardised on RealPlayer for their video and audio streams (which may not continue much longer as the new DRM-encumbered BBCiPlayer rolls out) they got an agreement from RealNetworks to provide an ad-free version of RealPlayer. It's freely available to all, but only if you go through the BBC site to get it and, crucially, do not install the "full" RealPlayer first.

The BBC version has been effectively neutered; it doesn't fire up the browser unless you ask it to, and doesn't look for ads in the background. Without those annoyances it is my favourite Windows media player. :-)

Excellent book

[amaupin]

This was an excellent book, and based on a Doctor Who script or not, I always thought it was much better than any of the Hitchhiker's novels. (However I still put the original Hitchhiker's radio series at the top of Adams' oeuvre, mostly due to the brilliance of Mark Wing-Davey.)

Can't wait to listen to this new show.

For those who want MP3s...

[tajmorton]

Use mplayer to decode it and lame to encode it:

$ mkfifo inandout
$ lame inandout --tt "Episode 1" --ta "BBC Radio 4" --tl "Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency" --ty 2007 --tn 1 --tg "Speech" Episode1.mp3 &
$ mplayer -prefer-ipv4 rtsp://rmv8.bbc.net.uk/radio4/comedy/wed1830.ra -ao pcm:file=inandout pcm:fast -vc dummy -vo null

Or, if you want a script that cron can run: http://www.wildgardenseed.com/Taj/record-dirk-gently.txt

Re:For those who want MP3s...

[OriginalArlen]

Or use this handy script.

Real player

[Neon Aardvark]

I hate real player too, but installed it a while ago to listen to BBC radio programs (some of which are worth it).

In case anyone cares, this is apparently why they persist in using this abomination: http://www.bbc.co.uk/feedback/broadband_faq.shtml#latelyFAQ8

I'm glad that this was serialized...

[Smerity]

I'm glad that this is being serialized, Douglas Adams' work lives well in an audio form, and I'm sure the BBC will do it justice as they have his works in the past. I read Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency some time ago and it held up to all the expectations I had from Douglas Adams. If you've enjoyed any of his past works, or enjoy the kind of humour found in Terry Pratchett you'd find this fun.

This is honestly quite tailored to the scientific individual - the story focuses around a computer programmer (Richard MacDuff), an ongoing dilemma of Dirk Gently's great difficulty trying to track down a missing cat (Schrödinger's cat), an issue with the moving sofa problem (and how it was impossible for the sofa to actually become stuck in the first place) and for those who know of Coleridge's poetry (specifically The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Kubla Khan) you'll be in for quite a few twisting and entertaining surprises. There's also a time machine in there for kicks =]

Honestly, if the concept of a "thumping good detective-ghost-horror-whodunnit-time-travel-romantic-musical-comedy-epic" interests you in any way, do yourself a favour and either listen in or buy the book - you won't be disappointed =] PS. I'm Australian (but with a strong grounding in American culture) and I didn't find too many 'Britishisms' in Dirk Gently... Maybe you're looking too hard? ^_^

Re:Thanks for the warning

[garbletext]

Once again, the pirate community says "you're welcome"

Re:Poor guy!!!

[lord_sarpedon]

Its blade length and style varied, but it was generally 7-14 inches. However, the blades of Irish versions often were as much as 21 inches in length. From Wiki. Emphasis mine :)

Re:good stuff!

[wizzdude]

To be honest, I think the licence fee is worth every penny for Radio 2, 4, 5 Live, 6 Music and the website alone. I'm very happy to pay it for everything.

Who is this Adam's Dirk?

[koafc]

And why is he being gently serialized?