Elijah Wood takes leading role in BBC America's Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency

The Lord of the Rings star will play Todd, Gently’s reluctant sidekick, in the eight-part series based on Douglas Adams’ classic novels about a detective who who makes use of “the fundamental interconnectedness of all things”.

There’s no word yet on who will play the lead in the show, which is being written by Chronicle’s Max Landis (son of John) for broadcast later this year. The series will be set in America, and promises “an utterly fresh, comically self-aware tone”.

According to Deadline, Todd does not consider himself a sidekick, telling Gently, “I am not your Watson, a**hole.”

Of course, it’s not the first time Gently has been brought to the screen: Stephen Mangan starred as the holistic sleuth in an excellent but sadly short-lived BBC4 series in 2012, in which Darren Boyd played his sidekick, Richard MacDuff. Harry Enfield also played Gently in two Radio 4 dramatisations in 2007 and 2008.

Originally published in 1987, Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency was Douglas Adams’ first non-Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy novel.

Adams famously recycled elements of his Doctor Who scripts Shada and City of Death into the book. It was followed by a sequel, The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul, a year later.