Douglas Adams once wrote a detailed explanation of how to tell the difference between Friday and a fried egg. Comparing Adams’s Dirk Gently novels to this new TV adaptation feels equally absurd. It’s a compulsively watchable show, but its breathless, urgent tone brings it closer to E4’s Misfits than to anything Adams wrote.

Given the enduring success of Adams’s Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (15 million books sold and counting), it’s only natural that producers keep returning to his equally funny, but less well-known, series about a penniless psychic detective.

Dirk Gently has already been played by Harry Enfield on the radio, and Stephen Mangan in a shortlived BBC Four show. Now, under the guidance of writer-producer Max Landis, it’s Samuel Barnett’s turn to fill his shoes, which he does with plenty of sub-Doctor Who arm-waving and chirpy enthusiasm.