just to get his next pay cheque." The funny thing is that Adams's central character, who in the books feels as much a part of the Eighties as leg warmers, has aged rather well. "When I reread the books," says Overman, "it struck me that even though they were written years and years ago, they felt very contemporary. Gently was ahead of his time." Overman offers Zen Navigation, Gently's method of finding his way around, as an example. Gently describes it as follows in The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul : "My own strategy is to find a car, or the nearest equivalent, which looks as if it knows where it is going and follow it." In an age where drivers will follow their satnav's commands off cliff edges, that strikes a chord. The books, Overman says, "chime with how we live our lives today. In episode one, we talk about a computer program that could be used to justify anything. That reminds me of what's happening in the world today in terms of wars that are based on spurious arguments." Even Gently's detecting method, a loafer's variant of EM Forster's "only connect", has started to look more prescient as the years have gone by. Adams, famously, was fascinated by technology -- he owned one of the first Macintosh computers in Britain and his office was a stash of circuit boards and vintage synths. In 1987, a character who thinks everything is interconnected was a good joke. Yet the