Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy, The
Entry updated 8 June 2026. Tagged: Film, Radio, TV.
1. Radio series (1978, 1980). BBC Radio 4. Written and created by Douglas Adams, produced by Simon Brett (first episode) and Geoffrey Perkins (subsequent episodes). Cast includes Peter Jones as The Book, Simon Jones as Arthur Dent, Geoffrey McGivern as Ford Prefect, Stephen Moore as Marvin the Paranoid Android, Mark Wing-Davey as Zaphod Beeblebrox and Susan Sheridan as Trillian. Six 30-minute episodes broadcast weekly from 8 March 1978 to 12 April 1978. Christmas special 24 December 1978. Second series of five 30-minute episodes broadcast daily, 21-25 January 1980.
Douglas Adams's phenomenally successful Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy sequence began in March 1978 as a six-episode radio series, officially numbered Fit the First through Fit the Sixth in echo of the section divisions in Lewis Carroll's The Hunting of the Snark (1876 chap). Two episodes of this first series (#5 and #6) were cowritten with John Lloyd, who was to be associate producer of the later television series (below). This initial series was followed in the same year by a one-off Fit the Seventh timed as a Christmas special; the first year made Hitch Hiker the only radio show ever to achieve a Hugo nomination, as Best Dramatic Presentation in 1979. A second series of five episodes was broadcast in January 1980. Hitch Hiker built up a massive (for radio) cult following. Commercially released recordings of the radio broadcasts – initially as two double sets of LP records in 1979 and 1980, produced by Geoffrey Perkins – sold widely; the first series, first LP (1979) and second series won the newly introduced BSFA Award media category in successive years, 1979-1981. Adams then turned his scripts into the bestselling novels The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy (1979) and The Restaurant at the End of the Universe (1980), eventually followed by three further volumes. The radio scripts appeared in book form, with some additional commentary and trivia notes, as The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy: The Original Radio Scripts (coll 1985) edited by Geoffrey Perkins. The three further novels were adapted back for radio after Adams's death as The Tertiary Phase (2004), The Quandary Phase (2005) and The Quintessential Phase (2005). [DRL/PN/GS]
2. Television series (1981). BBC TV. Written and created by Douglas Adams, produced by Alan J W Bell, associate producer John Lloyd. Peter Jones and Stephen Moore voiced The Book and Marvin, as in the radio series. Cast includes Simon Jones as Arthur Dent, David Dixon as Ford Prefect, Mark Wing-Davey as Zaphod Beeblebrox and Sandra Dickinson as Trillian. Six 35-minute episodes, re-edited to seven episodes for first US release. Colour.
This Television serial began life as a BBC Radio 4 production, as above. The television version was largely based on the first six radio episodes, only slightly on the subsequent six; many scenes from the radio series were not included in either the television or book versions. Adams had substantial television experience, having been a script editor on Doctor Who. The television series was very funny indeed – although less liked by many aficionados than the original radio version – and was notable for the then-sophisticated graphics with which the eponymous talking Guidebook itself was animated (see also Travel Guides). Hitch Hiker belongs to a very English school of comparatively deadpan (and somewhat cruel) absurd humour, based on the implicit premise that the Universe is arbitrary and unkind, especially to the English, and suffers from galloping Entropy. Although US television seldom produces work of this sort, the programme was successful there also, although not to the same extent as in the UK. It is often replayed, and is available on video, slightly expanded, with average episodes of 40 rather than 35 minutes. [PN]
3. Videogame (1984). See The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
4. US film (2005; title rendered as The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy). Touchstone Pictures. Directed by Garth Jennings. Written by Douglas Adams and Karey Kirkpatrick, based on the novel by Adams. Cast includes Yaslin Bey (as Mos Def), Anna Chancellor, Warwick Davis, Zooey Deschanel, Martin Freeman, Helen Mirren, Bill Nighy, Alan Rickman and Sam Rockwell. 109 minutes. Colour.
This film is generally faithful to the original novel, with some changes and additions. As in other versions of the story, hapless Arthur Dent (Freeman) is rescued from the impending demolition of Earth to make room for an interstellar highway by his friend Ford Prefect (Bey), secretly an Alien conducting research for the Travel Guide The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. They arrive on board one Spaceship of the aliens destroying Earth, the bureaucratic, bad-Poetry-loving Vogons, who promptly expel them into space. But they are rescued by the President of the Galaxy, the two-headed Zaphod Beeblebrox (Rockwell), and his companions, the amusingly depressed Marvin the Paranoid Android (Davis; voice Rickman) and Zaphod's girlfriend Trillian (Deschanel), an Earth woman who Dent briefly met and attempted to date before she decided to go off with Beeblebrox. Beeblebrox is seeking to find the Ultimate Question, which will explain the previous Ultimate Answer given by the advanced Computer Deep Thought (voice Mirren): "42." Following some misadventures, they encounter the world-builder Slartibartfast (Nighy), who is busy constructing a new Earth to replace the destroyed planet. After Dent escapes a final crisis – an effort by Earth's secretly intelligent Mice who built Deep Thought to remove his brain to find the Ultimate Question – he departs with Trillian and Prefect to eat at the Restaurant at the End of the Universe, here existing in present-day space instead of at the end of time as in Adams's novels.
The film is noteworthy for its novel sentimentality regarding Dent and his burgeoning romance with Trillian, perhaps intended to make the film more appealing to a broad audience; for example, in the novel, the prospect of having Dent's brain removed is sarcastically regarded as insignificant by his comrades, but it is a crisis taken seriously in the film. Yet if one can adjust to this change in tone, the film is reasonably diverting, and it offers some innovative touches; the Hitchhiker's Guide is envisioned as a lively television screen; a new character is introduced, Vice President of the Galaxy Questular Rontok (Chancellor), who is in love with Beeblebrox and emerges as his projected new companion when Trillian departs with Dent; and the film's Infinite Improbability Drive generates a number of amusing images, including a concluding picture of Douglas Adams, who sadly died long before the film was completed and released. [GW]
see also: BBC Radiophonic Workshop.
links
- Internet Movie Database – 1981 tv series
- Internet Movie Database – 2005 film
previous versions of this entry