“There is definitely Hitchhiker’s crossover,” explains Dirk Gently adapter-in-chief and director Dirk Maggs. “In this second series there is one particular idea from Douglas’s notes for the third [unfinished] Dirk Gently book which at one point he thought might be a Hitchhiker’s book. It’s a very simple idea that puts one of the Hitchhiker’s characters in the same universe as Dirk Gently in a way that I thought had enormous potential. In this series we find that the characters in both universes are inhabiting the same world, and I think where we’re going with this is something that actually resolves later on in Hitchhiker’s. It’s turning into a bit of a prequel!”

As a huge fan of Douglas Adams, any news about his works tend to excite me. I’ve read the Hitchhiker’s series many times since I first discovered them at the age of 16. But, the Dirk Gently books have been less of an interest to me. I read the first one, but never got around to the second.

With the revelation (unbeknown to me before this article) that Adams was considering making them a prequel to Hitchhiker’s, I am now excited to finally read Tea Time. Hopefully, this new radio drama will be a better tribute to such a great man than the barely passable Hitchhiker’s feature film.

If you’ve read them, what do you think of the Dirk Gently series? Does it make sense that they fit in the Hitchhiker’s universe?