The Gently Touch

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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).