3.5
In fairness this is still pretty fun. It just happens to be a low point for the radio dramas.

Somehow, they really fucked with the romance's pacing and it feels very wrong to me

I always remembered So Long and Thanks For All the Fish as being the weakest of the trilogy, but I didn't remember it being this weak. I think that a lot of the problem with this adaptation by Dirk Maggs was in reducing the episode count from 6 to 4 which doesn't allow time for the story to breathe. But then, is there really a story anyway? Is there even a central concept or idea to this or is it just an attempt to find something for the Hitchhiker's characters to do, throwing in a Hitchhiker's concept like "the search for God's final message" which just doesn't work in nearly as interesting ways as the original search for meaning in the universe did.

I'd hesitate to call this a waste of time but it shows a creative lull in Adams writing and it's also a bad, uncommitted adaptation of the material which seeks neither to understand or expand upon it. it's still sporadically funny, of course. The Rain God is very amusing.

This fourth phase was always going to feel a little rushed after they reduced it to 4 episodes rather than 6; however they manage to do the story (So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish) justice.

We continue to follow the adventures of Arthur Dent as he finds the Earth has miraculously not been destroyed by the Vogon constructor fleet. Back on Earth he falls in love, wonders where all the dolphins went, and begins a quest to find God's final message. Oh, and more importantly, we have a final encounter with Marvin the Paranoid Android.

There are fun cameos from Stephen Fry, Patrick Moore, and Christian Slater.

4.5?
This one definitely has more of whatever made the first two so fun and crackly, but feels lacking in the Shenanigans department.
See, I've thought about it, and one of the things I really found appealing about this series is when the Gang gets up to some Tomfoolery. Some Hijinks. Some real Buffoonery. And you get a bit of that with Ford's storyline, but he's separated from everyone else and...idk, I miss the Lads playing hot potato with their one shared braincell.

A fun audiobook, bubble gum for the mind. Do read "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" first or you won't get all the weird references needed to understand what is going on.

Fun!

This feels like a romantic comedy shoe-horned into the "Hitchhicker's" universe. Adams essentially hit the giant "reset" switch on many of the events from the first story here, losing the general lunatic tone and style of the original. Arthur moons and swoons through most of the story, but little else, almost as if Adams was feeling sorry for all the trouble he'd been put through (or, I suspect, he was tired of writing the character.) This Phase of the radio drama is considerably shorter than previous entries, and ends on something of a cliffhanger: the only real drama in this mostly harmless entry.

don’t panic

This is probably my favorite series or the radio play. When I was younger and first reading Hitchhiker's I have to admit I had a huge crush on Fenchurch and was devastated by her disappearance at the end.

nice one to read

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