Hitchhiker’s Guide Returns To Radio

The BBC is making a new series of the radio drama of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. It will be based on the sixth book in the “trilogy” plus unpublished Douglas Adams material.

The series will be titled “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy: Hexagonal Phase” and will largely be an adaptation of the book And Another Thing. That was written by Eoin Colfer in 2009 with the permission of Adams’ widow, with Adams having mentioned before his death that he would have liked to have written a sixth instalment. It won’t be a straight adaptation however: instead it will also feature unpublished material from Adams’ notebooks.

The new series will feature several actors who’ve played the roles in BBC radio adaptations of the series right back to the original in 1978. This includes Arthur Dent being played by Simon Jones, who has already voiced the audiobook of And Another Thing. Other cast members include Mark Wing-Davey as Zaphod Beeblebrox and Geoffrey McGivern as Ford Prefect.

The Book will be voiced by John Lloyd, who worked with Adams on several projects, most notably The Meaning Of Liff, a series of books that matches obscure placenames with definitions for concepts that didn’t already have a word such as “BODMIN: The irrational and inevitable discrepancy between the amount pooled and the amount needed when a large group of  people try  to pay a bill together after a meal.