This week marks the 40th anniversary of the first broadcast of the original show. We take a look back at the cult classic’s lowly origins
Far out in the backwaters of the unfashionable end of the western spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun. Orbiting this at a distance of roughly ninety-two million miles is an utterly insignificant little green planet whose ape-descended life forms are so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea.
When these words were first broadcast in a dimly lit London studio on the evening of March 8th 1978, few people thought that many would hear them. This was after all coming on the airwaves at a time when the country was either heading to bed or thinking about it, and slightly zany sci-fi radio will rarely get much of a look in. Or so it was assumed.
Yet there was something special about this singular show that put common sense to one side and won listeners anyway. After a couple of episodes, it had raised various eyebrows. After six, it had become a certified cult hit.
BBC Radio 3’s Critics Forum famously said that it had “the sort of effect that a Monty Python programme actually has, of making everything that appears immediately after it on radio or television or whatever, absolutely ludicrous.”
The show’s considerable success led, inexorably, to a novel. At this stage, Adams had yet to develop the chronic allergy to writing that frustrated so many of his colleagues, and so the book was produced in little over a year. It, like the show, was a near instant smash hit, and has to date sold over 14 million copies.
The beauty of Hitchikers Guide is that it taps into that existential feeling we all have that the universe is a special kind of absurd, a deep suspicion that bad things happen not because a higher being actively has it in for us but because they want to expand their conservatory and we’re in the way.
Its warm and whimsical tone has won countless fans through the years, striking that rare balance of being nihilistic without extinguishing all hope.
Similarly, the story has over the decades played very fast and loose with its own canon; notably from the second series onwards the radio show has diverged from the stories Adams chose to tell in his novels.
Furthermore, the ending of the fifth book in “the increasingly poorly named Hitchikers trilogy” was so abruptly bleak that when the radio series caught up it opted to make great sweeping changes so that unsuspecting listeners could leave with a smile instead.
Since the very first broadcast, Adams’ creation has spawned five sequels, four further radio series, multiple stage plays, a TV adaptation and even a poorly received movie remake in 2005.
Its most recent outing begins this evening on BBC Four, with an adaptation of the sixth book in the series, Eoin Colfer’s And Another Thing… It remains to be seen whether this will match the quirky wit of the original, but in a hopeful sign for the show much of the original cast will be reprising their roles. They’ll also be joined (yes, really) by Stephen Hawking.
If you need any further reason to believe that HHGTG still has a relevance in today’s less free-spirited times, you need look no further than the recent Space X mission to Mars.
Elon Musk, the man responsible for the launch and a devout fan of the radio show, couldn’t resist messing with the dashboard on the Tesla Roadster strapped to the rocket engines. The message broadcast by his car as it orbits our solar system in perpetuity simply reads “DON’T PANIC” in large friendly letters.
The Hitchikers Guide to the Galaxy: Hexagonal Phase begins on BBC Radio 4 this evening at 6:30pm
