DIRECTED BY: Douglas Mackinnon (episodes 1 & 2), Michael Patrick Jann (ep. 3 & 4), Richard Laxton (ep. 5 & 6), Wayne Yip (ep. 7 & 8), Alrick Riley (ep. 9 & 10)
FEATURING: Elijah Wood, Samuel Barnett, Jade Eshete, Amanda Walsh, Hannah Marks, Fiona Dourif, Mpho Kaoho, Dustin Milligan, John Hannah, Alan Tudyk
PLOT: After the events of Season 1, Todd and Farrah are on the run and Dirk is a prisoner in a secret military facility; a new mystery begins when a visitor from the magical land of Wendimoor reveals that Dirk is prophesied to save their world from an evil Mage.
WHY IT WON’T MAKE THE LIST: TV series, not movie. But it’s a series you may want to take note of: otherwise, we wouldn’t be reporting on it, would we? “Dirk Gently”’s mix of absurd humor, bewildering but addictively complex plotting, and fanboy-friendly sci-fantasy tropes was just intriguing enough that that BBC America took a chance on it as potential cult item, but also so weird and difficult that it was cancelled after only two seasons.
COMMENTS: “Have you noticed an acceleration of strangeness in your life?”
The following synopsis may not make much sense to a lot of you. This includes veterans of “Dirk Gently Season 1” as well as newcomers to the series. The one advantage Season 1 viewers have over total neophytes is that they understand “Gently”’s method—throw about a dozen subplots and random events at the viewer in episode 1, then spend the rest of the season slowly connecting the dots, with every little detail merging in a “holistic” (and fantastic) fashion. So, I’ll just lay it out: season 2 introduces a gay pink-haired hero with a scissor sword. A train in the sky. A fishing boat run aground in a field in Montana. A friendly, sort of slow sheriff and his hard-partying deputy. A beleaguered middle-aged woman with a limp, a crummy son, a crummy husband, and a crummy job at the quarry where her crummy boss is making shady deals. A dashing gangster in a snappy white suit with a black tattooed hand and a fabulous mustache. A magic wand. A car stuck in a tree. (The literal Purple People Eater won’t show up until episode 4).
It does all connect, naturally. This high-fantasy based plot is perhaps not as satisfying as Season 1’s time-travel yarn, but on the other hand the show devotes more time to building up its underlying infrastructure, dropping hints about Project Blackwing and introducing new “anomalous individuals” like Dirk and the Rowdy 3. (They’re all sort of a team of metaphysical X-Men gone renegade.) Rather than dominating the plot with his clueless exuberance, Samuel Barnett’s Gently is sidelined a bit this season, moping through most of the story in an existential crisis. He and Elijah Wood’s Todd Brotzman invert their Season 1 dynamic, with Todd now eager to solve the case for his own reasons, dragging the reluctant detective along with him. Other characters pursue their own arcs. Farrah shows more vulnerability, and there are hints of burgeoning romance between her and Todd. Todd’s sister Amanda develops magical powers, making her character more relevant—although this development feels a little forced. Ken is set up for a heel turn. And holistic assassin Bart (Fiona Dourif) remains the most fascinating entity. Her fans will be thrilled with her opportunities to prove she is the ultimate badass killing machine, and she gets by far the best lines: “I think that sometimes when you’re killing people they don’t like it, and it makes them unhappy, and scared, and also dead, which they don’t like, I don’t think…” If that monologue doesn’t intrigue you, then “Dirk Gently” isn’t the show for you.
Unfortunately, the series has been canceled, and we’ll never get to see where creator Max Landis was ultimately headed with all of this. The most bittersweet part of what turned out to be the series finale is that the last shot sets Bart up for a dramatically increased role in the unmade Season 3.
WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:
That’s a great review and it is a real shame the show was cancelled after two seasons, I was a big fan of it and given the concept it could have run and run for years.
Same here. I don’t remember exactly how I ended up seeing this on Netflix (since for the rest of the world it’s available there whereas in the US it appears to be on BBC America and Hulu afaik), but seeing Season 1 unfold from start to finish on its sci-fi mystery was great, Wood and Barnett’s and Koaho and Dourif’s respective dynamics was enjoyable. Season 2 also did feel more flawed and predictable compared to the first amidst having a fantasy setting this time, but most of the actors were still solid on their roles to make things work.
Imo the cancellation that they did, while partly understandable if it was due to low ratings, is BBC America’s own fault due to inconsistent promotion. There are barely any decent trailers to represent Season 1, and the Netflix trailers on YouTube at least on other countries were seemingly disappearing since I watched Season 1. Season 2 on the other hand has some proper promotion on YouTube but most of the events won’t make sense if you don’t see Season 1 first. You can’t expect people to be attracted more towards a second season of a series if they didn’t get properly introduced with the first one.