TV Review: Dirk Gently Series 1.3

The final investigation in the first series sees Dirk in hot water, somebody is killing his former clients and our intrepid hero is the only thing that connects them all.

rating: 5

The final investigation in the first series sees Dirk in hot water, somebody is killing his former clients and our intrepid hero is the only thing that connects them all. Despite all this murder and Dirk€™s plans to flea the country, the duo still manage to get a new client. A recently divorced woman has some trouble with a stalker, which turns out to be Dirk. He doesn€™t see it as stalking, he sees himself as a €œcovert experimenter€™. Based on her handwriting Dirk wanted to observe her to see if she was worth dating. Dirk Gently is cheap, that€™s not a slur against this fine TV show€™s limited budget but a simple fact about the world€™s leading holistic detective. From an unpaid receptionist to unpaid plummers, there€™s literally nobody that Dirk has failed to pay. MacDuff says it best when he tells Dirk €œDo you not think your life would run a little smoother if you paid somebody once in a while?€ This cheap streak is ultimately Dirk€™s downfall and sets off a chain reaction of interconnected events that in the end save his life from the mess he partly created. So all€™s well that ends well, right? Owing to his downtrodden receptionist€™s ongoing hatred of him (or love), she diverts all of his calls to a variety of cheap answering machine services. His client€™s messages find their way to Chinese takeaways, dry cleaners and the infamous contact killer The Cleaner. This final case (for now) was the strongest episode of the series, both Mangan and Boyd bounce off each other gloriously. This time MacDuff feels the fool for believing in Dirk, his kind comments about him to Susan last week haunt him as he has lost faith in his friend. There were also some great references for Douglas Adams fans, a splendid pun off with a convicted killed and has that pear sign on the back of MacDuff€™s computer been there all this time? Dirk Gently has been an enjoyable, fun and very silly addition to the world of DIY detectives and its absence on a Monday will be sorely felt. Lets just hope some of that reward money Dirk and MacDuff are going to collect will be enough to get our shoestring heroes back on our TV screens for a second series, now please BBC Four. Dirk Gently is released on DVD on March 26th and is well worth adding to your collection. Chris Suffield
Contributor

Chris Suffield hasn't written a bio just yet, but if they had... it would appear here.