If you're furiously scratching your chin, fervently thumbing through a dogeared copy of Hitchhikers Guide to The Galaxy, going "I don't recall Douglas Adams ever mentioning a 'Todd' - that's because Tom didn't exist. He is a "new" character, specially penned for the BBC America sci-fi comedy series, currently written by Max Landis.

According to AVClub.com, Todd is "a reluctant assistant to Gently - who’s essentially a con man who repeatedly, and inadvertently, wanders blindly into the answers to the surreal problems he’s hired to solve - Todd is described as a sort of anti-Watson, calling his quasi-boss an asshole and insisting that he’s got his own problems to deal with."

Deadline adds: "Todd does not consider himself a sidekick. He is just flat-out better than Dirk at a lot of things... As Todd describes himself to Dirk: 'I am not your Watson, a**hole. I am not available for side-kicking on something I am not involved with. I am my own messed up person with my own messed up problems"."

The series, which is co-produced by AMC Studios, Ideate Media and comic book publisher IDW Entertainment with Circle of Confusion producing, is set to air stateside this autumn. 

Hopefully it'll be better received than Gently's last incarnation courtesy of Steven Mangan and BBC4 back in 2012.

BBC.com reported back in July 2012 that "The Douglas Adams-inspired show on BBC4 had not been recommissioned due to the freeze on the licence fee. More than a million viewers watched the Dirk Gently pilot in December 2010. A three-part series followed in 2012, with just under 600,000 viewers tuning for its final episode in March. The show, based on Adams's 'holistic' detective, also featured Darren Boyd as Gently's sidekick Richard MacDuff."