“Where are you? It’s time.”
These are the first words you hear in BBC America’s Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency’s premiere episode, “Horizons”. It comes from a guy, Patrick Spring, who ends up dead and wants a detective, Dirk Gently (Samuel Barnett), to begin investigating the case six weeks before said dead guy winds up dead. Dirk pops out of bed. And here we go.
Wait. Before this thing proceeds any further, a disclaimer ought to be established: I’ve not read any of Douglas Adams’s books. I’ve also not seen a second of the BBC4 adaptation of Dirk Gently, which aired from 2010 to 2012 and starred Stephen Mangan. So. What you’re going to get from me is a straight reaction to a straight television series.
What this is, as a straight television series — for the first episode, at least — is a cluttered, charming mess. So many facets are introduced and, unless you watch these 50-plus minutes more than once (I did), you might have no earthly idea about what most of it means (unless you’re already familiar with the books or the previous television series, of course).
So, where do we begin? Well, much as the title suggests, Gently is a holistic detective, and a holistic detective is a “detective that doesn’t find clues”, as his soon-to-be-sidekick Todd Brotzman (a particularly nervous Elijah Wood), points out. Gently, for all intents and purposes, allows the universe to run its course with the belief that, in the end, everything will work itself out. He doesn’t have an array of weapons. He doesn’t possess a vast collection of resources. He just speaks quickly — with a British accent — and claims that he once worked for the CIA.
Gently and Brotzman come together because … well, that’s not entirely clear at first. The detective kind of/sort of thinks his new friend can be useful in helping crack the case, so he climbs in through Todd’s apartment window after Todd’s brutal, very bad, no-good, awful day and introduces himself. The two slap-fight. Todd tells Dirk to leave. Dirk dismisses his demands.
Why? Because Todd was a bellhop at the hotel in which Patrick Spring was killed. I say “was” because Todd has since been fired after being labeled a person of interest in the investigation (turns out, being a person of interest in a murder case doesn’t look great to the clientele of a luxury hotel). Chalk this up as reason No. 49 when it comes to why Todd had the aforementioned brutal very bad, no-good, awful day.
In the meantime … well, in the meantime, there’s a lot.
First, an unidentified African-American woman is chained to a bed in a very dark and very ominous apartment above Todd’s.
Second, Todd has a landlord who’s pissed because Todd stole rent money from him.
Third, Todd stole that rent money because he needed to give it to his sister, Amanda (Hannah Marks), because she needs medication for a very rare and very weird disease (example of said disease: Amanda plays the drums and eventually feels like the drumsticks are large knives cutting her hands so she freaks out).
Fourth, a holistic assassin, who only kills people she’s meant to kill, named Bart Curlish (Fiona Dourif, looking all types of Nicky Nichols from Orange Is The New Black), takes someone named Ken (Mpho Koaho) as a sort of hostage.
Fifth, something called the Rowdy Three bamboozles Todd’s apartment, which inevitably leads to Todd’s landlord shooting a bullet into the ether that ricochets about 32 times before killing said landlord (hey, at least we don’t have to worry about that rent now!).
And sixth, of course, is that Todd wins the lottery, meaning that all the money problems introduced in this first episode are theoretically now solved for forever and ever (amen).
Oh, wait. There’s also a corgi.
It amounts to a scattershot narrative that only really works because of creator/writer Max Landis’s wit. Beneath all the details is a cutting humor that, in a rare move, is actually humorous. The chemistry between the so-called regular detectives, Estevez and Zimmerfield (Neil Brown Jr. and Richard Schiff, respectively), is a world of fun, and even the interplay between the bumbling Sgt. Hugo Friedkin (Dustin Milligan) and his resident straight man Col. Scott Riggins (Miguel Sandoval) is both endearing and clever.
It’s a lot of a lot packed into nearly an hour, but if “Horizons” was supposed to set up a zany, intriguing foundation for a narrative that keeps you both wondering and laughing … well, mission accomplished. So, to play off the dearly deceased Mr. Spring’s words, it is, indeed, time.
Time to move forward. Time to see what’s next.
A Clue, An Accomplice, or An Assistant
The title here is a nod to what Dirk concludes Todd might be upon first meeting him. He quickly decides that Todd, like it or not, will be his assistant.
Am I the only one who thinks it’s so much fun to see the dark, brooding, manipulative Richard Schiff from The Affair come over to be the wise-cracking, self-serious, eyebrows-raising Richard Schiff from Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency?
I’m not so sure I would’ve picked Seattle as the place in which to set this story. Just saying.
Oh, it was painful to see Todd and Amanda play music together. Oh, it was painful.
Honestly, guys. I’m convinced that Bart Curlish is where Nicky went when she was sent away in season three of Orange Is the New Black. Natasha Lyonne should be receiving royalty checks.
“You’re a person of interest permanently, even though you’re not necessarily an interesting person,” Zimmerfield says. “That feels unnecessarily rude,” Todd replies. Sure, this might not translate as well in the written word, but out loud, Schiff and Wood have some serious comedic chemistry.
I’m really liking the soundtrack to this thing. It’s a little Halt And Catch Fire, a little Drive, and a lot of fun.
“I am not your Watson, asshole.”
I said this up top, but it’s worth expanding on here: There’s a lot of a lot going on and all told, that might be a detriment to the series, at least as far as first episodes go. Very little is explained and, because there are so many moving parts, it’s hard to decipher what to invest in. I mean, even though I listed off six could-be plot points, there’s still a missing girl out there that I didn’t reference, and there’s also that weird group of dudes who killed the hotel manager. I’m hoping this stuff either starts connecting or starts prioritizing itself because right now, it’s hard to wrap my head around the notion that any of this is eventually supposed to make sense. Even The Wire made you feel like there was a narrative after its first episode, and that thing had more plot lines than a shelf of John le Carre novels.
This Week’s MVP: It’s gotta be Zimmerfield, right? Between his ominous eyebrows and constant insults, he’s established himself as the most entertaining character on a series that, so far, is fairly entertaining.