I'm hoping I can get him to watch the Beeb's HHGttG; might need to get BritBox just for that.
NO! Get him to listen to the original radio series. For a start, the pictures are better.
If nothing else, the miscasting of Saaaandwa Dickinson as Trisha McMillan was one of the great crimes of the 1980s.
Even worse was Zaphod's second prosthetic head; dire even by the standards of the day. A much better version was seen in Ken Campbell's stage play at the Rainbow: they had two actors in one jump suit, effectively a less uncomfortable version of a pantomime horse.
The TV graphics to the book's entries were too good: they distracted from the wonderful Peter Jones's audio.
So yes, the original audio is the definitively wonderful version.
While I do appreciate the purist ethic displayed here, and I have even gone so far as to torrent and listen to every ep of the radio show I could find...
no.This is just as much aboot sharing part of my youth with my son, and the BBC HHGttG on PBS was my first exposure to Douglas Adams.
Up to that point, my exposure to Brit humor was mostly Dave Allen (I know, not a Brit) and Benny Hill; for me it was a
moment, a seminal part of my own personal enlightenment.
The
papier-mâché Zaphod head is part and parcel of that experience, and I love it in its own right. I have kept him away from the movie version, even though I do still quite frankly and shamelessly love Alan Rickman's voice acting as Marvin. After I've watched the TV serial with him, we will also enjoy the movie together for its own good contributions to the HHG Universe, and the boi and I will discuss the two, just as I did with my mum.
And
when he grows up to such a point as we can actually enjoy things like radio shows together, then I will share that with him as well... or encourage him to seek them out on his own as I did.
mnem
And it didn't hurt that the theme music was the Eagles' "Journey of the Sorcerer".