'Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency'

I Read The Books And Forgot It All

Is this series anything like the books I read? It's so long ago, I can't freaking remember! I didn't recognise any of the plot points so I figured it must have been reworked extensively.

Anyway. Uh, in case you haven't read the books, spoiler alert.




What's Good About It

I don't know that I go for quirky any more, but this is certainly good quirky. The story is put together in a weird patchwork and even includes a portion of time travel paradox, which is telegraph but nonetheless cool. It's rather circular and strange, which seems to be Netflix's thing this year with their  original content. There's something about this series that is echoed in 'Travlers', 'Stranger Things' and even 'The OA'. Perhaps Netflix is working up to a theme across their original content series.

Some of the moments in this series are really good. It's a shame it is mostly inconsistent in tone and that makes it hard to gauge of the things are happening because of the directorial touch being inclined to quirkiness or whether it is genuinely important to the plot that the quirky thing happens in an awkward manner. All the same, the unpredictability is something good, so it gets points for tht adroitness.

Fiona Dourif's Bart is a scene stealer. There is something truly unhinged about this character that is wanton, reckless and insane, but somehow really peculiar and interesting.

What's Bad About It

There's something a bit slack and skewiff about the tone of the series as well as the performances. The characters seem to simultaneously inhabit different kinds of mimeses and don't really gel together well. The performances are very spotty through out, with only Elijah Wood looking like he knows what he's doing. But you expect that of Elijah Wood after all, he is Mr. Frodo who sustained that character through 3 lo-o-ong movies.

The tone sort of jumps around from comedy to thriller to action adventure and back to farce. It comes across as very unsure of itself. In the current market place of good TV content, it's a terrible, annoying problem to sit through. There are other shows out there that know exactly how and what they want to put across to the audience. This one is a little lame that way.

What's Interesting About It

Why is this Dirk Gently? How is this Dirk Gently at all? Why did they have to hang all this on to the character name? It's so weird.

I've come to the conclusion that this series isn't inherently interesting despite what it claims to draw as source material. it's more interesting in the context everything else going on with Netflix and their original content.

What 6 Billion Would Buy

Netflix is going out on a big limb in 2017, as it has slated US6billion for original content. Judging by what we're seeing so far, Netflix has been consistently good with what it has given us, but just in the last few series, I've noticed that maybe the editorial decisions have not been as good. In the category of absolute winners for Netflix would be the three Marvel TV shows - 'Daredevil', 'Jessica Jones', 'Luke Cage' - and 'House of Cards' which has been its flagship. Other shows to impress include Season 3 of 'Black Mirror', 'The Expanse' and 'Stranger Things', while 'Traveler' was reasonably better than okay but not quite excellent. 'The OA', was probably the first of these shows where I felt the content wasn't quite up to scratch, while this one is telegraphing  that maybe there isn't as much good stuff in the pipeline.

'Designated Survivor' starring Kiefer Sutherland has been good, but in a weird way competes with 'House of Cards', and may not exactly be as good as the earlier show. There has been the trope of the special girl and the nosebleed that popped up in 'Stranger Things' followed by 'The OA', and a growing sameness about the kinds of mysteries these shows are mounting. Against all this hyperactive production, I'm not convinced 'Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency' is delivering the goods. When you compare it against the slew of good shows being produced outside Netflix, 'Dirk Gently' begins to look really amateurish and a bit ordinary.

Netflix have announced there will be a second season later in 2017. I'm not exactly holding my breath.