Don’t panic! The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy is back | The Guardian
▻https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2018/feb/27/the-hitchhikers-guide-to-the-galaxy-bbc-radio-4
In 1985, #Douglas_Adams said the #BBC’s view of the first series of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy was like Macbeth’s attitude to murder: “Initial doubts, followed by cautious enthusiasm, then greater and greater alarm at the sheer scale of the undertaking.” Those days are, however, long gone and the BBC is marking the 40th anniversary of Adams’ ground-breaking creation in style.
The original cast has been reunited to record a new radio series of the intergalactic comedy that, from small beginnings in 1978 on Radio 4, grew into a juggernaut that spawned a TV series, a Disney film, a much-loved series of books, several stage shows and even a video game.
What makes the performance all the more poignant is that they are playing a scene written by Adams but never previously recorded. The new series combines unpublished material, dug out of Adams’ notebooks by archivist and superfan Kevin Jon Davies, and newer plotlines drawn from And Another Thing, Eoin Colfer’s book continuing the saga, which was commissioned by the Adams estate after the author’s sudden death at the age of just 49 in 2001.
The 40th-anniversary series starts on BBC Radio 4 on 8 March.
