The BBC television adaptation was initially considered 'unfilmable' by executives, but Alan J. W. Bell was eventually given the duties to produce and direct it after resistance to the project.

A fully animated version of the series was briefly discussed in autumn 1978, but it was decided instead to make most of the series live action, animating only The Guide's entries.

David Dixon replaced Geoffrey McGivern as Ford Prefect because McGivern did not suit the role visually, and Sandra Dickinson replaced Susan Sheridan as Trillian because Sheridan was unavailable at the time.

Douglas Adams himself spoke the lines of Eddie the Computer and Deep Thought on set to provide proper timing, before they were redubbed by David Tate and Valentine Dyall respectively.

Douglas Adams made several cameo appearances in the series, including as a background drinker in a pub scene and as the man who walks naked into the ocean, a role he took over after the original actor called in sick.

A production gap caused continuity problems: Simon Jones had his hair cut short for another role and wore a noticeable hairpiece in later episodes, while David Dixon's hair appears longer between the pilot and the rest of the series.

To depict Zaphod's three arms and two heads, a radio-controlled animatronic second head with twelve servo motors was built, but it proved notoriously unreliable and often sat inanimate; the third arm was achieved by designer Mike Kelt hiding behind actor Mark Wing-Davey and slipping his own arm into an extra sleeve.

The mock computer animation sequences for The Guide were actually produced using traditional cel animation techniques by Rod Lord, and this hand-animated 'computer graphics' work won a BAFTA, a Design and Art Direction Silver award, and a London Film Festival award.

The theme music was Tim Souster's arrangement of 'Journey of the Sorcerer' by Bernie Leadon, previously used for the Hitchhiker's LP; it was released as a single in the UK in January 1981 with a B-side featuring Douglas Adams playing rhythm guitar.

In episode five, the opening titles show the number 42 crossed out several times alongside the number 101010, which is the binary representation of 42.

A planned second television series would have used material from Adams' abandoned 'Doctor Who and the Krikkitmen' project, but disputes with the BBC meant it was never made; that material was instead reworked into the novel Life, the Universe and Everything.

Because of the large number of models used across episodes two to six, a single day of filming (28 October 1980) was set aside at BBC Television Centre just for model sequences, described as 'a luxury few other shows could afford'.