Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Radio Show

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is a British science fiction comedy radio series originally written by Douglas Adams and first broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in 1978.
It follows the adventures of Arthur Dent, an Englishman, and his alien friend Ford Prefect, after Earth is destroyed to make way for a hyperspace bypass.
The series was innovative for being the first radio comedy produced in stereo and featured a distinctive opening theme by the Eagles, "Journey of the Sorcerer".
The original series, known as the Primary and Secondary Phases, was later adapted into best-selling novels and other media, including a television series and a feature film.

The radio series was developed from an initial idea called "The Ends of the Earth," where each episode would end with Earth's destruction in a different way, but Adams shifted focus to center the story around The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, a fictional pan-galactic encyclopedia.
The pilot episode was recorded in 1977 and led to a full series of six episodes, commissioned in 1977 and broadcast in 1978 and 1980.
The main cast included Simon Jones as Arthur Dent, Geoffrey McGivern as Ford Prefect, Mark Wing-Davey as Zaphod Beeblebrox, Susan Sheridan as Trillian, and Stephen Moore as Marvin the Paranoid Android, with Peter Jones narrating as "The Book".

After Douglas Adams's death in 2001, Dirk Maggs directed and co-produced new radio adaptations of the remaining novels in the series, forming the Tertiary, Quandary, and Quintessential Phases, which were broadcast between 2004 and 2005.
A sixth series, adapting Eoin Colfer's novel And Another Thing..., was broadcast in March 2018, marking the final installment of the radio series.
The complete radio series, including all six phases, has been released on CD and audiobook formats, with remastered audio and re-recorded announcements by John Marsh.
The series is often referred to as a "trilogy in six parts" and remains a landmark in radio comedy.