BBC4’s quirky detective series Dirk Gently has been cancelled, according to the show’s star Stephen Mangan.


“It gives me no pleasure whatsoever to report that the BBC have decided not to make any more Dirk Gently,” the actor told Twitter followers this afternoon.

Based on the books by Douglas Adams, the comedy-drama followed Mangan’s eponymous “holistic” detective and his assistant/partner Richard MacDuff (played by Bafta winner Darren Boyd) as they employed Gently’s idiosyncratic methods to solve cases.

A pilot episode was watched by almost 1 million viewers when it first aired on BBC4 in December 2010. But a series of three hour-long episodes shown in March this year saw an initial average audience of 844,000 fall to less than 600,000 by the final instalment.


Last year, Mangan said he’d be “heartbroken” if the show was ever cancelled, telling Metro “If they axe it, I’ll go round there and smash the place up with my bare hands.” BBC security is no doubt on standby…