Max Landis’ wild TV adaptation of Douglas Adams’ novel Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency is gearing up for its second season. And if you thought its first season was full of wild twists and rampant weirdness, Landis and his cast promise: You ain’t seen nothing yet.
During Comic-Con International in San Diego, CBR spoke with Landis, showrunner Robert Cooper, and Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency‘s leading men, Elijah Wood and Samuel Barnett about what’s in store for season two. And while they were all careful to guard against major spoilers, these dudes dished some pretty enticing details, chief of which is a major shift in genre.
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“Saying Season 2 is a fantasy thing, it almost feels like a spoiler,” Landis fretted in a shared roundtable interview with Cooper, “Although we do begin the season with a sword fight.” To which his showrunner noted, “And there’s magic in the first episode.”
“Max describes this as an anthology show,” Barnett explained in a paired interview with Wood, “Where the genre changes, but the characters stay the same. So last season was time-traveling, body-swapping, and this season is high magical fantasy, dealing with magic.”
Landis assured us that aside from magic and Dirk swashbuckling, there’ll be a Narnia-like fantasy realm known as Whendamore, and lots of monsters in season two, adding, “Some of them are extremely dumb looking. No. All of them are extremely dumb looking. We make Doctor Who look like Star Wars,” he teased before noting cryptically, “Our monsters look the way they do for a specific reason in the show.”
Also new to the series will be a supporting cast that includes Tyler Labine and Izzie Steel as a pair of cops who protect the rural community of Burgsburg, Montana, and Alan Tudyk’s Mr. Priest, a dangerous government agent who looms large at the top-secret Black Wing facility. “So you’re introduced to a whole new pack of people,” Landis assured, but then warning, “And last season everybody you were introduced to died, so I don’t make you any promises. But they are great, and the dynamic is completely new.”
Asked about the case that’ll play at the center of Season 2, Landis offered an engimatic answer, saying, “On our show, this isn’t a mystery show. It’s a mysterious show. Our show has more in common with Game of Thrones than it does with Broadchurch. We’re talking about an intricate science-fiction fantasy thriller. The fact that there’s a case, it’s important. It drives the story but it is ultimately incidental. If you were trying to guess the solution to the case via the clues, you’d probably just lose your mind.”
Still, Landis promised: “If you saw the first season of this show, there’s no way you could predict where it goes. There’s literally no way.”
Enjoy a glimpse of what’s to come on Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency‘s season two sneak peek.
Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency returns to BBC America this fall.