h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

So who had dreams of men with sticks and rope and black feathers last night?

Suffocating in wet sand if that counts.

Not sure about Nina's relevance - she wasn't supposed to be in this series but her performance last series was so good they felt they would be daft to lose her.

I think Annie is going to be very important again, and yes, Ivan is very good. Watched it again last night and there was a bit in the hospital with Annie and Saul where the radio voice used a threat to persuade Saul to push Annie in by saying they wouldn't want them to let the men with rope and sticks out. (although they didn't call them that, was some other word). Could be a hollow threat, but interesting that if there is some sort of status quo that has been upset we could get the ghosties prowling the street.

The Kate Bush moment was more than a tad surreal, even in a program about ghosts, werewolves and vampires!

didn't realise they were doing books as well:

http://www.dreadcentral.com/news/35244/bbc-books-publishing-a-three-novel-tie-in-being-human

Just remembered one other thing I really loved about this weeks episode: the music. Annie's signature theme is just beautiful.

It's the acoustic guitar and piano bit and it sometimes has a few notes on the cello that send a shiver up my spine. I first noticed it when her door appears at the end of s1 ep5 but this week it was used a few times.

Like I said, it's the little things that get to me.

btw, you have spotted http://censsa.co.uk/ haven't you?
(series 2 specific so poss spoilers)

>Do I really have to wait a whole week for the next ep?<

The wait is over! It's Sunday!!

indeed. Well, our Mitchell has taken a bit of a darker turn although I think the role reversal was a bit predictable. But then within the world created perhaps inevitable. And not sure I'm happy about the twist with his love interest, I kinda thought something like that might happen.

Lots of laughs though and George was on good form! The 'worst date' thing made me laugh (and made me think of someone I know to whom that would have been a good date!) and he some good lines.

Really getting into the meat (excuse the tasteless phrasing!) of it now I think, getting things set up. Suspect Mitchell's lie will come back to haunt him to (unless I misunderstood something). Nice modern twist on using repeat offenders instead of the homeless as the acceptable expendable part of society - should get them a few daily mail viewers!

Yeah, I'd had that person as a strong candidate to be Professor Jaggert and so the reveal wasn't quite as powerful as it was meant to be. Elevates the creepiness of her character though.

Nina was superb in her minutes on screen, but as always, my heart belongs to George: he was what made this episode work. The stuff with Hugh struggling to find and keep a girl requires suspension of disbelief though - handsome, kind, own business. If Scouse Flower Girl doesn't want him, I'll have him.

The stuff with Mitchell and the vampires felt very much like the secondary story: with the exception of Daisy none of the vampires have any real presence. Daisy was excellent again, and I'm glad they decided to rest her last week and not over-use her because she works well in small doses. I'll be interested to see Ivan's response to Mitchell's New World Order - he's the other vampire with real substance to him.

Oh yeah, and the stuff with the Real Hustle was brilliant: I love that George and Mitchell are avid watchers of it.

thought that was played a bit OTT - I mean, I know what they were trying to acheive but i thought it a bit ham fisted.

BUT then again the bit that really got me wi9th Mitchell and his new world order was Cara (Rebecca Cooper, took me a bit to find that out!) the canteen girl vampire from series 1. The bit where she went for the teenage girl bullies in the shopping centre (and turned their victim I think if the later shot in the funeral directors was anything to go by) showed a different side of her.

Maybe a bit of the bullied and down trodden girl getting her own back and saving someone else from the fate she had suffered at the bullies hands - and then she ends up being punished for it. Perhaps the combination of the bloodlust, the vengence and the power of saving someone else from something she suffered being too much for her to obey Mitchell. Quite convoluted stuff.

Then again I may have read far too much into it!

I like what is happening to Mitchell. H'es being drawn into the maelstrom of Herrick's removal inexorably. It kind of puts pay to George's witticism in the first episode of him "having nothing to do" as all the dramatic twists that had centred on him had now been resolved - whereas on the contrary it's all about to unravel. I also like how that's drawing in the 'familiars' that support the vampire world - the Chief Constable and The Coroner out into the semi-open.




I didn't predict Dr Lucy would be Professor Jaggert - I had it down that this would be some sort of fictional front for the organisation run by the gruesome twosome who all the recruits were seduced by but the real power that lay behind the throne was the bible-thumping revered.

However her reveal does make sense of a few things:

1) Her promotion from twixcuits in the garden.

2) Her closeness to the (now dead) fiance handing him the cruifix and reaction to Mitchell's prayer.

3) And - and most importantly - her nochalant reaction to the spate the spate of recent deaths

i)The Mince of Darkness scene, where they joked about exsanguination and how there was no blood at the scene.

ii)On the shots of the dead girls from the shopping mall (where it pans to the glum-looking Coroner being blackmailed) the wounds on their necks are *clearly* bites not just any puncture wound. she'd have seen hose and *known*

iii) When Mitchell asks her out in the mortuary over the body of the fiancé - she's completely sussed the put up job of his murder, but both of them dance around it. We knew Mitchell's reason; know we now hers.

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George is still the emotional of this show.

I love him.

Favourite bit was the poem - the fragant smell of you hair is like - Mmnph! - kebab!



I think the repeat offenders gag was just writers having a crack at the police via the cynical and corrupt chief constable

I liked the joke at the start with the flaming torch.


I think you're right about Daisy and Ivan in small doses.

I also liked the elevation of dark half-moon spectacles vampire (In the church) / whistling suit (opening up the funeral parlour ) as a visible face of the vampires, also the return of the granny vamp serving tea. I hope they make something of them so far merely seen but not heard. But I agree, that's where Ivan and Daisy are going to become the foils of this series - she's already had a go at lady Macbeth ("do it right and you'll never have to do it again.")

I knew I should have recognised the the canteen girl from last series - but I confess I didn't. I think that is reading a little too far I took it like the good vampire said of his murder lover from last week said: he may have come back "not nice". I think she's one of the ones who came back not nice.

The Real Hustle stuff was an in-joke to far. I don't watch it so couldn't care less really. but kudos for making a joke about something in real life not just within the world of the show.

I'm afraid to say I didn't buy Mitchell's tough guy act. I think he'll need a godfather moment, taking out the heads of the five families kind of thing before the others *really* take him seriously.

But so looking forward to next week!!

iv) the scene on the bench from the other week "the plot thickens" and I'm sure at some point this week she said "this was clearly a murder I got here just in time" or something like that.

Which again makes sense in the light of her being Professor Jaggert.

At last - Series 1 came in the post today.

I'm about 10 minutes into Episode 1.

I think I'll be hooked quite soon.

OK. End of Episode 2.

Definitely hooked.

I might have to watch all of this series tonight. Or at least the first of the two discs.

Glad to hear you are enjoying it!

Clive - fair enough, was a short sequence open to interpretation. ~Was just the way she spied them and watched them and turned the victim.

Glad you've fallen under the show's spell Ivan.

No worries Ictoan. I think theories are fascinating, I just didn't quite read it as deeply as you did.

I should also mention that I've ordered Series 2 - thank you Amazon - I'll have to wait until April for it to be sent, and another fortnight before I actually get my hands on it.

I've also re-read this thread, at least the Series 1 bits, now that I know what people are talking about. It helps. I'll leave the Series 2 commentary until later.

But now that I've watched the first lot a couple of times, what am I supposed to do with myself until April?

*twiddles thumbs*

Welcome to how I felt at the start of September

The first series really is something special: the scene at the end of episode 5 might be one of my favourite bits of telly ever, alongside the Bucket Drop in Battlestar Galactica, Bartlet's rant against God in West Wing and Buffy's swan dive in, well, Buffy.

Just a perfect conjunction of superb writing, outstanding acting, genius use of set and powerful music.