I watched all six parts of the 1981 (BBC television) version of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy this week, and have to admit to a degree of disappointment; the program became a bit tedious, and the acting seemed wooden (in the actors' defense, they were not movie/TV actors - they were chosen for their radio voices and simply reprised the roles for the television version). The humor, which I remembered years ago as cutting edge and brilliant, seemed now to be a bit stale, but that may have been because of my overfamiliarity with the material.
But there are a quite a few iconic moments worth saving and savoring. I took low-res photos of the television screen, intending to store these images for future use for blogposts. But I already have so much stuff stored and saved up and bookmarked that I know the images will sit there gathering cyberdust.
So I'll post them now. I can still retrieve them for specific future posts, and in the meantime any of you with blogs who can find an appropriate indication for using one of these images is welcome to use them. Original credit goes, of course, to the BBC (there are other, crisper, studio-type images at the link).
I loved the books. The radio series was fairly good. The movies lost a little something for me.
ReplyDeleteI, too, watched the entire series as it was my 42nd year alive and I wanted to sit and ponder what all this absurdity of life was about. Although the acting and production were not top-notch, the underlying messages were still profound -- even if the books were better (up to a point).
ReplyDeleteIf you liked Hitch-Hiker's you might want to check out a book I've been trying to blog about for a while now called The Demi-Monde. It;s the first book I've read since Hitch-Hiker's that didn't seem to just be a pale copy of Adams style (like Terry Pratchett), but managed to unfold to a bigger and bigger plane as you read it. You could also check out the authors blog, if you like.
ReplyDeleteI have to say I REALLY enjoyed the BBCs rendition in comparison to the USA film. Marvin being a cutesy robot really irritated me, and I simply love dry humor.
ReplyDeleteDon't know where you are in the world, but I recently went to see a live re-staging of HHGG with the original radio cast in York, in the UK, and it was excellent. The live audience made the whole thing fresh again - I hadn't realised how much of it was actually laugh-out-loud funny (I'm used to smirking and congratulating myself on how clever I am to get the jokes!). The guy who made the recent radio versions of the last three books used bits from the radio and the books to stitch together a new sequence of events - way more successfully than the movie. They recorded it (and all the other performances), so you might be able to get hold of it.
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