With the fall television season finally kicking into gear, with the return of Network mainstays like the Arrowverse shows and The Walking Dead, the market is flooded with lots of options and us as viewers almost have too much to choose from. Each day about 3 or 4 new TV episodes is added to my ever-growing watchlist, although I did enjoy this at first eventually it just gets overwhelming and you need to become a bit more selective in your viewing habits. Goodbye Arrowverse (your better in binges anyway, well your moderately entertaining in binges, your actually near unbearable week-to-week). Goodbye Outlander (I’m sorry your just not as interesting on a weekly basis). But out of all these shows there’s one that I feel a compulsion to watch every week, as soon as it’s available, Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency. A bit of a mouthful yeah but it’s consistently one of the most complex, interesting shows on television. Not only does it have some really high concept fantasy/science fiction ideas, but it is also consistently charming with a large ensemble cast of likeable characters who are a joy to behold.
Before I get too much into why I love this show I should probably give some background as to how I originally found the show. I’ve been following Max Landis, the creator and executive producer on Dirk, for the last couple years now. It must have been around 2015 when American Ultra, a film he wrote the screenplay for, came out. Although I never saw the film due to some relatively mixed reviews, I remember seeing Landis talking about the film and being transfixed. There’s was something a little crazy about him, that unpredictable quality, but he was also very knowledgeable and seemed to have such an understanding and passion for his work. Although he didn’t have a web show or podcast that I could keep up to date on frequently like many other of my favourite ‘internet celebrities’ I still felt the need to try and find as much of him as I could. He made a few appearances on some shows which I liked, but the main place I could get my fix was his Twitter feed which has provided me with a lot of hilarity over the last couple years. After that I tried to stay up-to-date on his projects such as Victor Frankenstein and Mr. Right but I was sad to see that they just weren’t as good as I thought they’d be. Well-written yeah, but as films they just weren’t really hitting the mark. I realised in hindsight that this was likely due to the directors. One of Landis’ first films Chronicle which he worked on with director Josh Trank was good because the two worked well together, but I feel these other examples I have mentioned were cases of the directors basically just taking his script and not using it to it’s full potential. That’s why when it was announced that he would be the creator and EP behind Dirk I was so excited, this was his chance to essentially have full creative control over a project and the results were spectacular. So back to Dirk, I originally tried it out based on my love of Landis and his previous writing, but I was kind of shocked to find it was a genuine show with real production values. I probably shouldn’t have had such low expectations for the quality of production going in considering it was on BBC America which has had a couple hit shows like Orphan Black, but I was still surprised nonetheless. The show grabbed me almost immediately with its weird kind of quirky style, there’s tons of things happening every minute, many of which seem completely unrelated. For the first part of the first episode it almost seemed too much, how could any of these conflicting threads possibly be related. But the show begins to tie it all together relatively quickly, not to spoil much but the first season dives into time-travelling, body swapping, secret cults and ex-rockstars all under the same long-running mystery. It’s completely engrossing and keeps you guessing all the way up to the end, connecting these parts together was incredibly satisfying. It reminded me of Guy Ritchie’s early work such as Snatch and Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels. Seeing all these disparate characters coming together through impossible odds just like it did in those films is one of the main reasons I love Dirk. We’re introduced to Dirk and his new partner Todd, an insane, Holistic detective and an obvious sceptic respectively. They (well more-so Dirk, Todd is pretty oblivious most of the time) lead us into this new world which grows more insane by the minute. Like most of the characters on this show the two have great chemistry, Elijah Wood and Samuel Barrnet seem like they’ve been friends for years after only a couple days. There not the only duo we follow along on their journey, we also get to see the computer savvy Ken and the killing machine Bart (who kills literally everyone she comes across, apart from Ken). Although there on the other side of the country and their story seems almost completely unrelated, the stories connect in interesting ways and Bart provides more insight onto how Dirk became the way he is. These strong character dynamics combined with the incredibly interesting story kept me hooked each week. That year I returned to it every week, prioritising it over the latest episode of Better Call Saul or Game of Thrones just because of how interesting it’s core concepts were. It all culminated in a last couple of episodes that somehow managed to tie everything back together, even things which seemed impossibly stupid before began to make sense. Sure, I loved Max Landis’ characters and dialogue but the bonkers, ever-unfolding story was what really kept me coming back. I could barely comprehend how he took something so insane and made it almost seem plausible, I genuinely cared about these characters and the situations they were stuck in. As I’m writing this Dirk Gently has just began its second season, and just like the last this one deals with some pretty bonkers fantastical concepts (this time in an actual fantasy land), which I’m truly excited to see how Landis and his creative team make into something that affects me and keeps me coming back week-after-week over all the other great television on at the moment.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
authorSo this is weird. I’ve made a website, I’m not expecting anyone to read it (actually I’d rather they didn’t.) Basically I’ve been struggling to write creative things recently, every idea I come up with, no matter how much I think I believe in it, leads me nowhere. I guess you could call it writer’s block, but it’s more so that I tend to overthink and second-guess myself down to the smallest details, this means it takes me forever to make anything and once I have I’m incredibly demotivated to continue it. So, after being inspired by an Australian writer, Gabriel Bergmoser, who’s blog and podcasts I’ve been reading and listening to for the past few years I decided this would be an interesting experiment to try out. Basically I have no idea what I’m going to write, it’s unlikely to be creative or short stories, more-so this kind of string-of-consciousness opinion piece based on the things I’m thinking about at the moment. From films to television or maybe books and music. Anyway I hope you find some of this stuff interesting. Let’s hope I don’t say anything too incriminating considering my name is plastered all over this. Granted, this is something I will probably only update about four times in my life, unless I really enjoy it. It’s more so to help me be more creative and actually produce something for once.
Archives
January 2021
CategoriesNot really sure? Opinions on the blog, mainly about entertainment. I'll also be posting some fiction or short stories eventually for your feedback and enjoyment.
|