In Seattle, Todd Brotzman (Elijah Wood) is a hapless bellhop who awakens to find his landlord demanding the rent. The landlord is so furious that he wrecks Todd's car with a hammer. Having taken the bus to work, Todd asked his boss about getting paid early. Instead, his boss dispatched him to address some issues. On the way up to the penthouse, he saw the most alarming thing: himself. Yes, it was him wearing a fur coat and with a black eye. The other Todd looked at him, then dashed out of sight. And then the day got weirder. In the penthouse, he found three corpses that appeared to have been killed by a shark attack. One of the three victims was Patrick Spring, a noted millionaire whose daughter happened to go missing recently. After the police told him not to leave town, he returned to his apartment where a stranger was breaking in through the window! The intruder introduced himself as Dirk Gently (Samuel Barnett) and said he was on a case; he's a holistic detective. Todd threw him out, but like a bad penny, Dirk kept showing up and demanding that Todd was his assistant.
Elsewhere, Ken (Mpho Koaho) is an electrical engineer who does contract work. On this particular day, he was working for a bald tattooed man. Then Bart (Fiona Dourif) arrived with a machete and killed the bald man. Ken fled for his life. Bart stopped trying to kill Ken when he explained that he was not Dirk Gently. Ken found himself as Bart's captive as she hunted for Dirk and killed seemingly random people along the way. Bart claims to be a holistic assassin.
It turns out that everything is connected. The universe has a flow to it that both Dirk and Bart can feel. Pulled into the orbit of these holistic agents, Todd and Ken begin to sense this flow and get caught up in it. There is no escaping the interconnectedness of everything.
A very different take on the source from the last Dirk Gently series (2010). Where Stephen Mangan's Dirk was eccentric in a such a way that absolutely baffled his sidekick, Richard (Darren Boyd), Barnett's Dirk is more of a helpless oaf stuck in a river current that takes him where he needs to go regardless of his ideas on the subject. He only shines when the plot requires some exposition, at which point he becomes a Sherlock Holmes of keen deduction. His jumpy, cowardly, anxiety-ridden demeanor adds to his victim of fate rather than captain of it. He does not have the aptitude for his chosen profession.
Overall, the series was a lot of fun and managed to tie together a vast number of storylines into a neat package. It ends on a cliffhanger to prep for the second season. Recommended.
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