I think they repeated it last year after Douglas Adams's death. To be honest I think the original radio series was a lot better. A lot of the ideas (like Zaphod's extra arm and head) just didn't work with the effects technology available at the time, and Sandra Dickinson was a tragic miscasting as Trillian

I haven't actually read all of the books. What you do have to bear in mind is that each version of the Guide is an entity in its own right. The TV series was not a straight adaptation of the radio series and the books are similar, and yet entirely different, to both. Most people have a preference for whichever they encountered first as they quite justifiably view that as the 'correct' version. I would definitely recommend getting hold of a copy of the radio series though.

Ill strive to do that

Good luck with that Fluff, my man tried downloading the radio play of it.

It's all in parts, and *most* of them he could find, but a few seem to be very elusive

I think it's available on BBC cassette, but there'll be many tapes so it'll cost loads. (worth it though) I've got a taped-from-the-radio version that's on 4 (count 'em!) 90-minute tapes. Eek!

Worth getting, if you've got twenty-odd quids to spare, is the DVD recently released by the BBC. It's got the whole TV series, and a disc chock-full of extra gems, such as the Tomorrow's World feature from the time on Zaphod's head, which was at the cutting edge of technology at the time and had, if memory serves, the motor from a radio-control helicopter in it! Priceless. Also an excerpt from a BBC schools programme which went behind the scenes on the radio version, at the time when they were trying to reproduce the sound of a million robots singing 'Share and Enjoy' exactly a flattened fifth out of tune... OK, so the TV series wasn't a patch on the book (and I agree with White Hart, *why* Sandra Dickinson? what was wrong with Susan Sheridan, who was perfect in the role on radio???) but it's worth it for all the extras alone!

now, where did I leave my anorak? oh, there it is, right next to my towel...

As the proud owner of both the CDs and the DVD, I can safely say that I consider both to be worthy and worthwhile purchases. Of course, I consider £85 a not unreasonable sum to have expended on the 14 CD boxed set of the Lord of the Rings radio series while I was an impoverished student, but that's beside the point.

The DVD is superb, with a making of, a making-of addendum, the hilarious 'mono-headphone' warm-up for the test screening of the first episode, done by Peter Jones, the behind the scenes-y bits and a few scenes in the episodes themselves which I'm sure are new.

There's also a gimpse of Sandra Dickinson doing a 'posh English voice' for Trillan, and I have to say that I've been maligning the poor woman's acting for years, and it is kind of unfair. She can act, they just told her to use her real voice, which is just so 'un-Trillian'.

Anyway, the Radio series is my favourite as well, and as with White Hart, because I heard it first. Being as I'm White Hart's brother, this may not be too surprising. Many's the long car journey we'd spend listening to Hitch-Hiker, or Lord of the Rings.

And then I listened to them too much, and the tapes all broke, much like my Flanders and Swann cassettes and my first copy of Divine Madness. Go CDs, says I.

The books were superb and the tv series was great, though it would be excellant if they now did a movie version using the technology we now have!!! Zaphod's CGI'd ectra body parts would be more convimcing!

I liked Marvin the Paranoid Android - such a cheerful chap!!




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This won't be in the least bit helpgul, but i caught part of an episode around the godawful time of 4am last month on Radio 4, one of the ones that followed on from where the TV series left off. I'm sure it's quite over now, though...

You can probably download most of the radio series if you look around a bit. We have a vast amount of classic radio comedy that we've downloaded pretty easily, even with a standard dialup connection it takes about 30 minutes for a half hour show.

Or, in an even less helpful vein than Jango, it did say after one of the original radio episodes that it would be repeated through a time warp on the Home Service in 1954

I bought the VHS box set last year from Blackstar, £15.49 including p+p/vat. Its still available and has only gone up to £16.99, although now its excluding p+p.

Worth getting for the guide entries, alone.

It's now about 14 months since his untimely death.

My first exposure to this wonderful saga was via the first run of the TV series. The (ever-so-slightly incomplete) 6 cd release of the radio series was my first ever on-line purchase some 5 or so years ago, now mp3'd up on a never-to-be-deleted area of my hard drive.

Agree entirely with the Sandra Dickinson comments above.

I'd say the books are the best version. On one hand it's a real shame that a film never got made. On the other I can't see how it would have worked - blow the earth up after 20-30 minutes and then have an adventure in space with beginning, middle and end in, say, the remaining 80ish.

DNA sure was one hoopy frood who knew where his towel was.

Hello there

I've not read the book but I videoed the entire series last year bar the penultimate episode, anyone help me out with what happened in it?

(or should I just go read the book!)