Dirk Gently

9:30pm – Monday, May 14 on ABC2

The police want to talk with Dirk (Stephen Mangan) urgently. Several of his clients have been murdered and Dirk is the only link. Convinced that he’s being framed, Dirk resolves to flee to the country.

His great escape is interrupted by the arrival of a beautiful woman who has been terrorised by a stalker. To MacDuff’s (Darren Boyd – Green Wing) surprise Dirk takes the case but his surprise turns to astonishment when Dirk reveals that it is he who has been doing the stalking.

When the police finally catch up with Dirk at his horribly messy flat – his dispute with his cleaner has escalated into full scale war – they reveal he isn’t under suspicion; they want to protect him from a professional killer.

Dirk’s pride is dented. Honestly, as if he couldn’t commit a few simple murders… He and MacDuff investigate.

9:30pm – Monday, May 7 on ABC2

Douglas Adams’s Dirk Gently (Stephen Mangan – Episodes, Green Wing) and Macduff (Darren Boyd – Green Wing) return to Cambridge University where Dirk was expelled for cheating over twenty years ago. They have been employed by Dirk’s former Professor as security consultants to guard a valuable robot.

Within hours of their arrival the robot is stolen and the Professor found dead, with Dirk and Macduff implicated as the chief suspects. The Professor was the only person who ever believed in Dirk and he vows to find out who is behind the murder.

Dirk investigates Emelda Ransome the brilliant but embittered computer scientist, who has spent the whole of her career developing a fully functioning Artificial Intelligence, and David Cho, the Chinese programmer recently arrived from Beijing to help Emelda complete her experiment.

Susan (Helen Baxendale – Cold Feet, Friends) is coincidently in Cambridge at an interview for a new job which, if she gets it, would mean the end of Dirk and Macduff’s detective partnership.

9:30pm – Monday, April 30 on ABC2

Dirk Gently (Stephen Mangan – Green Wing, Episodes) discovers the connection between two seemingly unrelated cases: Mr. Edwards, who believes the Pentagon is tracking him and another client whose horoscopes appear to be coming true.

Dirk thinks Mr. Edwards is a crazed conspiracy theorist but is happy to take his money to investigate the case. When Mr Edwards winds up dead and Dirk discovers that he was working on a revolutionary software prototype, he realises that they’ve stumbled upon a much more complicated case.

To MacDuff’s (Darren Boyd – Green Wing) disbelief, Dirk decides that the only solution to this case lies in investigating a completely different one. This is a simple case of a woman who believes her husband is having an affair and asks Dirk to prove it.

What piques Dirk’s interest is that the husband has only procured a mistress because he believes his horoscope. When the connections between the two cases become apparent, Dirk’s unconventional approach to detective work proves revelatory.

9:30pm – Monday, April 23 on ABC2

Stephen Mangan (Green Wing, Episodes) stars as anti-hero, Dirk Gently in this four-part comedy drama series based on Douglas Adams’s cult novels and written by BAFTA-award winning writer Howard Overman (Misfits).

Dirk Gently operates a holistic detective agency based on the fundamental interconnectedness of all things. Perpetually broke, hopelessly chaotic and utterly infuriating, Dirk is suspected by most people of being nothing more than a cheap conman. They might be right, but nevertheless his methods, though unusual, do often produce surprising results.

When hired to trace elderly Ruth’s (Doreen Mantle) missing cat, Dirk meets an old university friend, MacDuff (Darren Boyd – Green Wing) and enlists him as his new down-trodden sidekick. They investigate a warehouse that houses a strange contraption that explodes.

A connection is made to a missing billionaire, Gordon Way (Anthony Howell), who has been besotted with MacDuff’s girlfriend Susan (Helen Baxendale – Cold Feet, Friends) for over a decade.

Dirk connects the dates when Ruth acquired her cat and when Susan dumped Gordon to solve a puzzle involving time travel and homicide.