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?

[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

[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.

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

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: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.