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Radio series written by Douglas Adams

The terms Primary Phase and Secondary Phase describe the first two radio series of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, first broadcast in 1978. These were the first incarnations of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy franchise. Both were written by Douglas Adams and consist of six episodes each. The series followed the aimless wanderings of Arthur Dent, Ford Prefect and his book, the eponymous Guide. It introduced unfamiliar music, By the time the sixth episode was broadcast, the show had a cult following. It was split into episodes, known as "Fits" (an archaic term for a section of a poem revived by Lewis Carroll for The Hunting of the Snark). The original series comprised Fit the First to Fit the Sixth. Fits the Fifth and Sixth were co written by John Lloyd; subsequent versions of the story omit most of Lloyd's material. The success of the series encouraged Adams to adapt it into a novel, which was based on the first four Fits and released in the second week of October 1979. A slightly contracted double LP re recording of the first four Fits was released in the same year, followed by a single LP featuring a revised version of Fits the Fifth and Sixth and the second book, both in 1980.

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 [in The Glittering Prizes] 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: The Official Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy Companion.

In 1980 a few American radio stations had broadcast the series (and a hardback was released in October), and the programme was finally broadcast in stereo by US National Public Radio in March 1981, prior to the first US book's paperback release in October of the same year. The episodes aired on NPR were not the complete episodes heard in the UK—they were edited down from their original 29+ minute running time to 25–26 minutes.