The funny thing about extinction

Last Chance To See is a reminder that we are currently experiencing the greatest period of extinction the world has ever seen, but the adventures of Douglas Adams and Mark Carwardine were often closer to comedy than tragedy.

When Last Chance To See began in 1988 Douglas Adams was a literary superstar. The Hitchhiker's Guide To the Galaxy had begun life as a radio series before becoming a book, a film, a second book, a TV series, a third book, a computer game, a comic book series, a fourth proper book, a stage play, a towel, and (later) a final book. The franchise made Adams a multi-millionaire with fans on every continent. The Hitchhiker's Guide To the Galaxy was a story without boundaries. People could have two heads, robots could be depressed, a fish could instantly translate every language ever conceived (and consequently start many terrible wars) and the answer to life, the universe and everything could be 42. Anything was possible.

Perhaps the greatest achievement of The Hitchhiker's Guide To the Galaxy was that it made science fiction funny. When the radio series first appeared in 1978 it was launched into a genre that took itself exceptionally seriously: Star Trek enjoyed an audience famed for its earnest dedication, Star Wars had burst onto the big screen a year earlier with the triumphant fanfare of a twentieth century epic, even Britain's own Doctor Who (a series Adams had worked on) was best loved when the Daleks sent the kids cowering behind the sofa. In short, in 1978, science fiction was seriously low on laughs, which was a central factor in ensuring that the low-key launch of a new space-comedy on Radio 4 got a reaction that was anything but low-key.

In 1985 The Observer Colour Magazine invited Douglas Adams to travel to Madagascar in search of the aye-aye, together with the naturalist Mark Carwardine. The two enjoyed the experience so much that they hatched a plan to spend a year seeking out strange, endangered creatures.

Perhaps then, having brought comedy onto the hallowed corridors of science fiction, it should be no surprise that Douglas Adams would bring a wide smile to the very real world of extinction. But while the fictional and faintly ridiculous world of sci-fi was ripe for a story that was essentially funny, could the same be said for the rapidly accelerating depletion of the planet's biodiversity? Indeed, is humour even an acceptable tone in discussing the disintegration of global eco-systems?

Undoubtedly, there isn't much that avoids comedy in the end. In 1968 Mel Brooks' The Producers saw Nazis link arms and high kick their way into a Busby Berkeley style swastika while singing Springtime For Hitler. Clearly time passing helps. It is easier to laugh at Hitler than Robert Mugabe, but laughing at tyrants who remain tyrannical has a healthy pedigree. In 1938, when the victory over Hitler was far from certain, Charlie Chaplin, the greatest comedian of his day, wrote and starred in The Great Dictator, openly lampooning Hitler.

Child killers, genocide, 9/11, and curiously unpleasant diseases may not be the first thing that comedy writers turn to, but none have completely avoided the interest of comedians. The experience of German Jews during the Second World War may be the ultimate taboo for humorists, but Roberto Benigni's film Life Is Beautiful has given rise to a new subgenre, the holocaust comedy, which now includes Jakob the Liar and Train of Life/Train de vie.

Armando Iannucci, one of Britain's most successful comedy writer/producers, says: "Over questions of taste and taboo in comedy, my instinct is always first to ask: is it funny? That's why I probably would have had more sympathy with the Christian protest groups if Jerry Springer: The Opera had been less amusing, and would have had more sympathy with the Danish cartoonists if their efforts in depicting Muhammad had been more witty."

Photo by Mark Carwardine

But there is another consideration. Comedy makes the unpalatable, palatable. WS Gilbert had his jester Jack Point announce to a Victorian audience that "I can teach you with a quip, If I've a mind, I can trick you into learning with a laugh". In Last Chance To See, Adams and Carwardine are not so far from Gilbert's jester.

The skill in Last Chance To See is that the humour is neither black, nor is it tasteless. Yes, it is a book driven by the catastrophe of global extinction. Yes, it is, very often, funny. But the book never leads us into morally ambiguous territory for laughs. Rather, Adams and Carwardine turn the humour on themselves. While we laugh at the chaos, misfortune and sheer bad luck that was never far away, Douglas and Mark delivered a hard-hitting message that remained long after the smile had faded. They hit the banana skins; the animals and the conservationists are left with dignity intact.

The tone is set when the two men meet in Madagascar. Mark has gone ahead to make arrangements. "Everything's gone wrong," he tells Douglas. "I nearly telephoned you not to come. The whole thing's a nightmare. I've been here for five days and I'm still waiting for something to go right. The Ambassador in Brussels promised me that the Ministry of Agriculture would be able to provide us with two Landrovers and a helicopter. Turns out all they've got is a moped and it doesn't work."

It could be argued that in Last Chance To See the comedy is the sugar and the message is the pill, but that would not quite be the truth. Following a series of highly publicised misdemeanours, seemingly symbolised by the revelation that on one occasion Blue Peter defrauded the nation's innocent wide-eyed children, the BBC has nailed its colours to the mast and declared Truth and Honesty its mantra, a point that Douglas and Mark had stumbled on to comic effect some 20 years earlier. The funny thing about truth is that truth is funny.

Great adventurers do not hack through jungles for months on end with a scowl - they head in the wrong direction, they go in circles and they run out of provisions at the crucial moment. The great leader steps off the platform and misses his step. Actors miss their cues, Bishops say double entendres and funeral directors struggle with laughter at inappropriate moments. Funny things happen to all of us, all the time. It is in our nature to seek out humour, it surrounds us. The skill, perhaps the genius of Adams and Carwardine, was that they mined it. They left in the bits others might have left out and the result was a radio series and book that were honest, engaging and very funny.

Photo by Mark Carwardine

Of course, the humour has another purpose, it makes the book inclusive. There but for fortune go you or I. Jargon and scientific theory give way to something a whole lot more approachable. The book, like the crisis it delves into, is not the preserve of scientists, it embraces all of us.

The current extinction event is, indeed, a catastrophe, but if humour helps the news of that catastrophe trickle and permeate through the homes of Britain, out across Europe and on around the world, then perhaps there is a small chance, infinitesimally small no doubt, but the faintest shadow of a chance nonetheless, that this quirky, perverse, occasionally ramshackle series of adventures, might yet make a difference.

Tim Green
Series Producer
Last Chance To See