WATCHING THE DETECTIVE
Familiar faces turn weird in season two of
Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency is back!
When showrunner Robert Cooper tells SFX that in this season of Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency, “Some crazy shit goes down,” we’re inclined to believe him.
Writer Max Landis’s adaptation of Douglas Adams’s novels – anchored by actors Samuel Barnett as the titular gumshoe and Elijah Wood as his hapless sidekick, Todd – pushed absurdist TV to the limit in its first year. Now in season two, the show welcomes Alan Tudyk as Blackwing-recruited bounty hunter Mr Priest, War For The Planet Of The Apes’ Aleks Paunovic as a royal enforcer, Reaper’s Tyler Labine as small-town sheriff Sherlock Hobbs, and Agents Of SHIELD’s John Hannah as an evil wizard known as the Mage.
But according to Landis, the show’s finest roles go to the ladies, including Lost Girl’s Amanda Walsh as a soccer mom who teams up with the Mage, Izzie Steele as a bad girl turned cop, and returning action heroine Farah Black (played by Jade Eshete).
“The female characters this season are probably the best characters,” explains Landis. “Amanda Walsh’s character is something else… Season two is Farah’s season. The things we’re able to give her and the things we’re able to let her chase… Her, Bart (Fiona Dourif ) and Amanda’s characters, and of course Izzie Steele as Tina Tevetino. It’s exciting to take actresses and make them ridiculous heroes, because it’s so easy to make them experts or girlfriends.
“There’s so little we can say without spoilers,” he adds “about even what happens with Amanda Brotzman (Hannah Marks), Todd’s sister, in this season. We sort of hinted that something big might go on in the first season, but how big, no one has any idea. It’s so cool. You’re gonna like season two.”
“one of the fun things about Dirk,” says Cooper, “is that it does reset at the beginning of every year. There’s a new case, there’s a new setting. There’s a new world, and whole new groups of characters that really put a twist on the challenges our heroes face.” Cooper is quick to point out that in season two, “There’s a lot of echoes of season one. For example, you had two police officers who are sort of the button-up, straightand-narrow people, representing the point of view of the normal people in the audience. Well, this year you have two police officers who are introduced who I think you’re gonna love – Tyler Labine and Izzie Steele – and I would define them as kind of like fans of season one… But I’ll be interested to know at what point people remember that the cops in season one died horribly.”
“In fact,” laughs Landis, “everyone who wasn’t a main character in season one died horribly… we got to tell so many stories.”
“Buried within season two is a different show,” says Cooper. “There is,” agrees Landis, “a second television show hiding inside season two that gradually takes over, but the less we say of it, the better. I’ve never seen a show do anything like it. That’s not to say it’s perfect and wonderful, but it’s weird and cool.”
Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency returns to BBC America on 14 October, and will air on Netflix in the UK.