Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency

Three episodes in, and I love this so hard.

This is the BBC America adaptation, now being re-broadcast (if that's the right word) on Netflix.

I'll admit I kind of liked the BBC 4 version of Dirk better with Steve Mangan in the role, but Samuel Barnett's a pretty good physical comedian, and I really like Bart (the assassin lady) and Ken. Fiona Dourif is decidedly her father's daughter in this.

edited 12th Dec '16 5:29:25 PM by Unsung

This show is awesome. My favorite line in the show is: "How many sets of guys are there?"

Is this only available in certain regions or something? I can't find it on Netflix, across multiple platforms, and even when I follow a link directly to it I get a description of the show and not actual episodes to watch - the kind of thing that usually only happens when Netflix has (or used to have) a show but doesn't currently offer it.

"The difference between reality and fiction is that fiction has to make sense." - Tom Clancy, paraphrasing Mark Twain.

Not sure? I wasn't actually watching it on Netflix. It's just kind of a weird coincidence that it started being broadcast on Netflix the day after I started watching it.

Well, the trailer evidently isn't available in the US, maybe the show itself isn't either.

"The difference between reality and fiction is that fiction has to make sense." - Tom Clancy, paraphrasing Mark Twain.

It's most likely because of how redundant it would seem considering BBC America has all of the season on their official site, with the pilot being the only non-cable subscription restricted viewing. That ad was most likely for Canada.

At least we're getting a Season Two.

edited 13th Dec '16 6:58:41 PM by XMenMutant22

It's amazing. I'm happy. The weirdness keeps piling up. The show flows so nicely. It's like A Confederacy Of Dunces meets Doctor Who meets Kafka Komedy. It just goes on.

Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.

Finally saw it. Thoroughly enjoyed it.

Amusingly, this series seems practically built to be a point and click adventure game.

Haphazard plot jumping from one realization or puzzle to the next? Innocuous things turning out to be vitally important for highly obscure reasons and situations later on? Cynical but highly chipper humor? Lots of people slotting items into other items and remembering sequences to solve puzzles?

It would also a fun opposite to the Hitchhiker's Guide game, where the tiniest slip or missed opportunity of can render it unwinnable. Here, you can't lose but still have no idea what's going on and are often yanked into new craziness before you've figured out the current craziness... I guess it'd be kind of like Deponia or Sam & Max except the heroes aren't sociopaths and the humor is never mean spirited.

edited 16th Jan '17 1:33:00 AM by KnownUnknown

"The difference between reality and fiction is that fiction has to make sense." - Tom Clancy, paraphrasing Mark Twain.

Not sociopathic? Ha, about that— Bart. And the Rowdy 3. And Hugo. I guess you could say they're not heroes, but Bart and Ken are probably at least deserving of co-protagonist status, up there with Estevez and Zimmerfield. Depending on if Estevez was killed off for real or not. And Todd might be trying to do better in the present, but he was a real shitheel as well, as it turns out, even if he never killed anybody.

Mean-spirited could mean a few things so I won't dispute that, although for all the candy-coloured brightness of the production design, some of the humour here is dark.

...which I like. It reserves its teeth for those that deserve it, for the most part.

edited 17th Jan '17 12:50:23 AM by Unsung

By "heroes" I meant "protagonists." I'll give you Bart, but I'd still call her the main character of a tangential story than part of the main plot. Todd's done horrible things in the past, but that's never a factor in his behavior in the present (beyond his guilt over it), so he's not a Sociopathic Hero - in a hypothetical game, that would all be backstory, just as it is in.

Though thinking about it for Bart, it's more Blue-and-Orange Morality. I think the primary difference between her and Dirk is that he is cognizant of the fact that his calling prevents him from doing other things, while she has no conception of life beyond hers, but the show does a really good job introducing her as what appears to be an Evil Counterpart to Dirk, and then slowly revealing that though she's terrifying and indifferent to human life, character-wise it's not what it seems.

edited 17th Jan '17 12:46:00 AM by KnownUnknown

"The difference between reality and fiction is that fiction has to make sense." - Tom Clancy, paraphrasing Mark Twain.

Right, but I'm just saying that tendency of adventure games to feature ample amounts of Comedic Sociopathy is on full display, heh. That trope's almost never about actual sociopaths, just a certain level of callous, self-centred indifference.

True, but none of the protagonists exhibit comedic sociopathy in the way you would see in, say, Deponia, or Sam and Max, or other humor adventure series. Even Bart doesn't throw people's lives in the way of problems she wants to solve, unless that problem is a person she needs to hurt, in which case she harms the people she's supposed to. It seems like she's just wholesale murdering at first, but halfway through the series it becomes clear that she's aware of who's significant to her and who isn't (though she assumes that everyone significant is someone she has to kill, which leads to problems with Dirk).

The tone of the show doesn't really match it, either. For as much as Amusing Injuries is a thing in this series, death and grievous injury is never treated as something funny in and of itself, and people getting hurt is always treated as something significant. Even after we learn Bart is driven to hurt people, her murders are always presented as scary because we see them through Ken's eyes. Bad guys getting shot or killed is dramatic or actiony, but not played for laughs, and if they are killed in absurd ways then the absurdity is played for humor rather than their ends. Even the landlord killing himself gets information later that shows it's not really all that funny.

Few of the main characters are simply indifferent to people getting hurt (some are cowards, and some are willing to break eggs to do the right thing, but few lack respect for human life), but more importantly the series itself isn't indifferent to it either, which is why I'd say the show isn't particularly mean spirited. The only full exception I can think of are the cultist about to cut open Farah who gets shot early on. Even the guy Bart kills by waving gets a horrified reaction out of Ken, who may or may not have been spending the episode trying to get her to stop killing people.

edited 17th Jan '17 12:59:20 AM by KnownUnknown

"The difference between reality and fiction is that fiction has to make sense." - Tom Clancy, paraphrasing Mark Twain.

A thing can be funny and not funny at the same time— making jokes about very serious subjects is a coping mechanism. I would argue that plenty of the deaths and a lot of the violence of the series is most definitely played for laughs. Not everyone is going to find all of it funny, and some of it is done completely in earnest in spite of how goofy it would seem (the drones holding Farrah hostage, Zackariah Webb mowing down the Men of the Machine in his mismatched steampunk armour), and that's okay, but it's that slightly uncomfortable disconnect between whether something is funny or terrible (exemplified most of all by Estevez bleeding out while Hugo goes off on another ditzy rant) which has been a big part of what's working about the show for me.

edited 17th Jan '17 1:07:32 AM by Unsung

Whether something is funny and what is being used to facilitate a joke are two different things. One is subjective, while the other is not. A gag can be funny or not, but what that style of humor is is something very specific to the writing. Things that aren't specifically being used as jokes can be funny, and often encouraged, but that's different from that humor being part of the series' style.

For example, in Zachariah Webb's rampage the suit is goofy, and the humor in that scene comes from that (though never specifically drawn attention to). The sequence never makes light of the fact that he's killing people. If the fact that he's killing people is funny, it's not because the sequence is literally joking about it - his mowing down of everyone involved and cold blooded killing of the Supreme Soul is played for shock rather than humor (the series also makes a lot of use out of characters who react in the same way we're intended to, in this case Todd and Dirk).

In contrast, the dude in the room with Farah who gets hit with the bullet - that death is played for laughs: both using the irony of such a menacing scene being ended in such an anti-climactic way, but also because the person is killed in a way that is convoluted and unbelievable. And also the slow realization that the guy is dead, but Farah is still screwed. The landlord's death is a similar gag, an asshole and an idiot getting screwed by the universe and his own idiocy and killing himself - and the joke is aided by the fact that up until then, he just looks like a crazy asshole who's picking on Todd. The humor is important to the shock we're supposed to feel later with the reveal that Todd feels terrible about it and actually did have culpability in what was going on.

edited 17th Jan '17 1:19:19 AM by KnownUnknown

"The difference between reality and fiction is that fiction has to make sense." - Tom Clancy, paraphrasing Mark Twain.

I'm not quite sure what the distinction you're trying to draw is— like you've said, the comedy part of the equation is personal and subjective. I'm just saying that the fact that something is taken seriously by the narrative doesn't mean it can't also be funny, and vice versa. You can have a joke, or gag, or visual pun in a scene that isn't intended to make the audience laugh, and I think we're in agreement on that. I would also agree that none of the protagonists are as bad as your typical UCP other than Todd, and hey, he's trying.

I guess I just don't really see that being the primary dividing line between this show and the kinds of adventure game stories we're talking about— not when Bart's Designated Hero status is literally a case of the cosmos enforcing it, when Zackariah Webb's manly quest to avenge his wife is blown all the way up only to be thoroughly punctured in the same episode, and not to harp on Todd, but I think he's there to show just how self-centred and sociopathic even an ordinary everyman stock protagonist can be, while still appearing superficially sympathetic. People do shitty things to each other, sometimes on the flimsiest of pretexts, not because they're good or evil, but just because they're people. And I feel like the thing that separates this show from the adventure games is that it does show the consequences and the need to change— but the comedic framework is still there, if that makes any sense.

edited 17th Jan '17 1:35:26 AM by Unsung

What I said was that whether something is funny is subjective, but what a joke is is objective.

The distinction is in it being funny when a character dies, and it being part of the series' humor to joke about the death. The latter is objective, and depends on the writer(s). The former is subjective, and depends on the viewer.

That's key to comparing the humor of two series, and whether they're the same kind of jokes or their humor is compatible. Comedic Sociopathy, in particular, is a very specific thing.

edited 17th Jan '17 1:45:33 AM by KnownUnknown

"The difference between reality and fiction is that fiction has to make sense." - Tom Clancy, paraphrasing Mark Twain.

I'm not sure that comparison really works for me. Something like Sam & Max, for example, is never as graphic as the violence in this series, for all its talk, and never really takes anything quite as seriously, never tries to. It's purely a comedy, barring some light pathos in the third Telltale game.

If you're saying that the main characters react more realistically to violence in-universe, then yes, that's true (that sort of behavior is usually reserved for nameless bystanders in Sam & Max). What I was getting at was more about the writers still framing the events in question as darkly comic, which I think is more a matter of degree rather than of style. Dirk Gently follows these events to their inevitable conclusion— most adventure games keep just enough distance from it to stay funny, turning away before it gets too real.

Comedic Sociopaths are still a big part of the humour of the show, but they're decidedly not the good guys, and if any portion of those qualities do appear in the heroes, it's treated as a bad thing and rightfully so. It makes the show more optimistic and more realistic, and that's good. All I'm really saying is that there are plenty of occasions where a conscious choice was made to combine more realistically shocking onscreen deaths with elements that made them funny at the same time, to deliberately trigger those conflicting reactions in the viewer.

Gotta go. Good talk, be back tomorrow.

The primary joke of Sam & Max is that they take an absurd situation, make it a thousand times crazier by interfering with it, and then somehow clean it up to the point where it's at least has a good enough conclusion. The joke with Max, especially, is that he's an unrestrained psychopath who happens to be a good guy, and the gag with Sam (though less so in the adventure games) is that he looks less so but really isn't. You don't need to be graphic for that kind of humor to work: even at their least graphic, like in the tv show, a lot of the humor is based on hilariously terrible situations befalling people (mostly people who deserve it, but still). There is a hell of a lot of general absurdity humor.

Dirk Gently is similar, but the focus is different. The big joke is that the main characters' situations are absurd and terrible, and keep getting weirder and worse - especially early on, these odd things are happening everywhere and affecting everyone but the big joke is that Todd's life sucks. Todd's misfortunes are played for laughs. As are Ken's. But not Farah's, or the dude that got shanked when we met Ken, or even the villains. And while Sam and Max coast by with blissful indifference and almost never themselves suffer permanent damage from their adventures, Dirk Gently's characters are very aware of how bad things are around them (even if they don't appear to be at first), are not indifferent to the way it affects others, and legitimately want to avoid doing wrong by others, which makes all the difference in tone.

But anyway, same. It's getting late...

edited 17th Jan '17 2:22:21 AM by KnownUnknown

"The difference between reality and fiction is that fiction has to make sense." - Tom Clancy, paraphrasing Mark Twain.

So, I started the Dirk Gently book. And today, I just found out I have access to streaming the series.

Will watching the show ruin the book for me or can I just watch it?

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Nah, this show's more of a case of Inspired By than Based On. There might be a few minor things where you'll get there ahead of the book if you watch the show first, but I wouldn't even say they're spoilers as such. I'd be curious to hear your thoughts if you do go ahead and watch and read them both at the same time.

The 2010 Steven Mangan series does outright spoil the books, in case you're wondering. I did like that version of Dirk a lot, though.

edited 28th Jan '17 10:12:03 PM by Unsung

Wondrous. That's legitimately the best answer I could hope for. I'll be sure to report my thoughts.

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The 2010 Steven Mangan series does outright spoil the books, in case you're wondering.

Only as a Freeze-Frame Bonus easter egg though. The actual plot of the pilot has some similiarities to the book plot, but it also has enough differences that you wouldn't know what is a spoiler and what isn't.

edited 29th Jan '17 8:50:30 PM by storyyeller

Blind Final Fantasy 6 Let's Play

It basically boils down to the 2010 show dropping any and all supernatural elements. All the high level weird stuff is just human technology.

The first episode is basically a really distilled version of the first book. The other three episodes are all original.

Oh god, I am so glad that the Reason software from the 2010 series doesn't actually exist and isn't in American hands.

edited 30th Jan '17 7:16:19 AM by Zendervai

Not Three Laws compliant.

Is this only available in certain regions or something? I can't find it on Netflix, across multiple platforms, and even when I follow a link directly to it I get a description of the show and not actual episodes to watch - the kind of thing that usually only happens when Netflix has (or used to have) a show but doesn't currently offer it.

Netflix has it everywhere outside the US only.

edited 31st Jan '17 1:23:56 PM by occono

Dumbo

I'm watching it on AMC's app. I logged in, but I actually think it's free for now even if you don't.

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