The new radio series is going to be broadcast in just a few days now and it’s hard to stay calm. Of course some good media coverage has already been done. MJ Simpson has spotted several articles :
– The Times has written a good article that you can find on their website. Simon Jones (Arthur in the radio series) regards the director Maggs as “the Phil Spector of Radio 4”! The Times comments that “The sound is indeed extraordinary”, but warns the upcoming listeners : “the need to shoehorn in years of back-story, coupled with Adams’s famous love of digression, make this first episode dense to the point of incomprehensibility. It takes until episode two to get warmed up”. The newspaper bets that the new series will may be help to regulate the generation gap between the first listeners 26 years ago and their children !
– Of course Radio Times has also done something, in the issue dated 18th-24th September, but it seems a little disappointing. Sad, because we could have expected something great from the famous british radio TV program weekly.
– Director Dirk Maggs is interviewed in this month issue of “Cult times”. Five page long so well worth a reading.
– Simon Jones (Arthur Dent) was interviewed in October issue of Dreamwatch, and in the BBC Programme information newsletter for week 38.
– It seems that the five page feature in Mail on Sunday published the 12th september was a little disappointing according to MJ Simpson. The journalist made a few mistakes and told nothing new.
– Roger Gregg (Eddie in the new series) wrote something in the Irish Times but sadly not available for free online. However I was lucky enough to read it (thanks roger!) and it is a quite good one page long insight report of the third series, with also a little history of the legend : “Everyone involved knows that The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy : Tertiary phase is destined for radio history. As the documentary cameras run, Simon Jones passes a stack of scripts over a buttered croissant. He politely asks everyone to autograph them. He explains that, having been based in the US for many years and done his share of guest appearances on the sc-fi convention circuit, he is keenly aware of the radio series and their million of adoring fans. The stack of signed scripts he announces are for charity raffles : each will sell for several hundred dollars in the US, he says. This starts a whirlwind of script signing”.
Of course, I think you can still find the TV Zone issue 180 which includes two lengthy articles about Hitchhiker’s Guide. 13 pages written by Andrew Pixley and Kevin Davies. You can’t miss that one!
