The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy Primary and Secondary Phases - Casting in Both Series

Casting in Both Series

As the first episode was originally commissioned as a pilot, much of the casting was done by Adams and Simon Brett, his original radio producer. Brett departed the BBC after the pilot episode was recorded, and so casting suggestions and decisions were made by Adams and Geoffrey Perkins for the remainder of both series. Perkins, using Brett's original notes, remarks that three or four people were auditioned for the part of the narrator, in search of a "Peter Jones-y sort of voice" before Peter Jones himself was actually contacted. Perkins also describes the casting of Simon Jones, Geoffrey McGivern, Jo Kendall, Bill Wallis and many others throughout the book containing the original radio series scripts.

Adams's own notes on the casting of Peter Jones "who can we get to do a Peter Jonesey voice?", Stephen Moore "Stephen would find the character immediately and would make it really excellent", Mark Wing-Davey "He played a guy who took advantage of people and was very trendy", David Tate "He was one of the backbones of the series. We had him there every week", Richard Vernon "He's so funny. He carved himself a niche playing all sort of grandfatherly types", Susan Sheridan "Susan never found anything major to do with the role, but that wasn't her fault, it was my fault" and Roy Hudd "To this day he still claims he doesn't know what it was all about" can be found in Neil Gaiman's book Don't Panic: Douglas Adams & The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.