Red Dwarf

Red Dwarf is probably one of the most entertaining TV shows ever made. It's a hybrid of sci-fi and comedy that, when it works, works perfectly. The four core characters - Lister, the last human in the universe, Rimmer, a hologram of his worst enemy, Kryten, a cross between C3P0 and Data, and The Cat, a super-evolved humanoid feline - are very strongly written and played by a great cast. The show is not perfect, as the small budget often shows and The Cat, and Rimmer in some cases, are often given lines that they simply wouldn't come out with just so they have something to say. Apart from this, though, the show is of a very high quality and very unique.

Series I and II were very cheap - everything was cotton or plastic - and focussed on the sitcom aspects and character development. It was with Season III, and the introduction of Kryten as a regular, that Red Dwarf began to achieve it's potential. Suddenly there was more sci-fi and adventure in the episodes, with spaceships, bazookoids (mini-bazookas), shape-shifting, emotion-stealing aliens, and a cool guitar version of the theme tune.

Series IV was even better, and Series V even better than that. The show became just as much sci-fi as it was comedy, very cool indeed and tackled some imaginative premises with more skill than Star Trek: TNG in many cases. Finally, Season VI was absolutely superb, with the best production values the show had ever seen, and the funniest, most exciting storylines. Plus the fact that Red Dwarf itself, the spaceship, wasn't even in Season VI, which made it exceptionally cool. Every single episode was excellent, with the highlight proberbaly being 'Gunmen of the Apocalypse' wherein the crew entered a virtual reality version of the wild west. Series VI ended with five minutes of pure drama and a stunning cliffhanger- you'd be hard pressed to find a more exciting climax on TV. With Series VII, except for the great first episode 'Tikka to Ride', the show faltered. Rimmer left along with one of the two script-writers, which half-crippled the show. Whereas there used to be constant laughs throughout previously, with Season VII there were a few laughs an episode. Rimmer returned with Series VIII, but then Red Dwarf became a total farce with no real sci-fi and everything played for cheap laughs. It became a plotless string of lame sketches and was simply not funny. The characters became caracatures. The show became a complete mockery of the blend of sci-fi/comedy it had achieved previously. Let's hope the forthcoming feature film, with both writers at the helm, can bring back some of the old magic the show had.

Reading through these reviews brought on a wave of nostalgia for me , I watched this show religiously from the very first episode , it's quite possibly the funniest thing I've ever seen . The first series when it was originally shown was so new and so different it was a really refreshing change from the usual dross that is the vast majority TV comedy . The friction between Lister and Rimmer is what really drives the show in the early episodes , it's great the way in which you have these two people who utterly detest each other but are confined together with no hope of escape from each other's company .

With the third series the show took a change in direction and pace , with the introduction of the character Kryten as a regular and the all new female version of Holly . With any other show this might have signalled the beginning of the end , such radical changes rarely go down well but with Red Dwarf it was like a new lease of life and saved the show from becoming stale or repetitive . Series 4 and 5 continued in a similar vein with the stories becoming ever more way out and crazy , all riotously good stuff .

Then along came series 6 and another set of very major changes , for a long time I had a really hard time getting into this series , the loss of the ship Red Dwarf was such a major change and it really kinda threw me . Upon repeated viewings this series really grew on me though , and it has some seriously funny episodes right up there with the best of them , and the end of the last episode in the series was really quite shocking , it actually brought a tear to my eye .

Next we have the ill fated seventh series which started out well enough with the episode tikka to ride , but after that it rapidly degenerated , it deeply saddened me to see what my favourite TV show was becoming , it was but a shadow of it's former self and with series eight things took a further plunge into banality and throw away one liners , what a terribly sad way for it all to end .

At it's best this show is the best entertainment it has ever been my pleasure to watch , but eventually I guess you can have too much of a good thing and I doubt we'll see it's like again .

Let's get one thing straight here: I don't watch much TV. A lot of the shows nowadays really get on my nerves. But RED DWARF is different. DWARF is shown on Saturday nights on my local PBS station, and the week just isn't the same if I can't see my favorite bunch of marooned space bums. The story is a bit of a long one: Dave Lister, a technician aboard the mining ship RED DWARF, is punished for having an unquarantined cat on the ship. His punishment involves going into stasis for 18 months, forfeiting all pay (which he wants to save up so he can move to Fiji with his cat and the love of his life, Kristine Kochanski). But while he is in stasis, his supremely anal-retentive superior officer and bunkmate Arnold Rimmer fails to fix a restraining plate properly on a warp drive, and the whole ship undergoes an internal nuclear explosion. When awakened by Holly, the ship's slightly loopy computer, Lister finds out he has been in stasis for over 3 million years. Rimmer, resurrected by Holly as a hologram, is back to keep Lister sane yet seems more probable to do the opposite. Lister's cat, who was pregnant, was safely sealed away in the cargo hold of the ship. There the cats have bred for 3 million years, and the last survivor of their race pops out of an air vent, a Felis Sapiens, or commonly known as just Cat. Together, they try to find a way back home to Earth...even if it takes 3 million years!

I would recommend this to anyone who likes a good laugh. :o)

Although Red Dwarf is over 17 years old now, it's only in the last year or so that I've seen it in-depth. At first I was a little cautious as it was described as a "cult" favourite, which I think is a polite way of saying geek/nerd fest. Fortunately my concerns were unfounded, as it is one of the funniest sitcoms I've ever seen.

The reason for this, in my opinion, is the terrific writing by Rob Grant and Doug Naylor - who also wrote the excellent Spitting Image. Of course, good writing would be useless without good actors delivering the lines, fortunately ever part in Red Dwarf is perfectly cast. Craig Charles (an unknown stand up comic before he was cast) and Chris Barrie (who previously worked with Grant and Naylor on Spitting Image) are both excellent in the lead roles of Dave Lister and Arnold Rimmer respectively. Robert Llwellyn, who plays Kryten, an android, only joined Red Dwarf in season 3, but quickly established himself as a lot of peoples favourite character. My favourite character, however, has to be the Cat, played by Danny John-Jules, mainly for the outlandish outfits he habitually wears.

Unfortunately the series is no longer on T.V. (in fact they haven't made any new ones since 1998), but you can now buy the series on DVD, and I strongly recommend you do (especially for the fantastic extras that are included).

I have watched this show as long as I can remember, and I've always loved it! This is "Men Behaving Badly" in the extreame! The completely OTT character traits and the extreamly exagerated situation make for the funniest 30 minutes of TV you could watch! All the characters are both lovable and cringe worthy in their own ways.

Lister (Craig Charles), with his lazy, slobby ways and Rimmer (Chris Barrie), in his uptight neurotic way are the two people you would least like around in a crisis! Rimmer would be too concerned about panicking professionaly and Lister would save his beer and curry before anyone else! Watching them throw insults at each other constantly makes for the funniest scenes! Not that the others aren't brilliant as well! Cat (Danny John Jules) And Kryten are brilliant too. They all bring something to the show.

The person (or machine) that steals the show everytime is Holly, played by both Hattie Hayridge and Norman Lovett. They are both briliant! Holly's frankness and detached obseravtions are brilliantly written and make me laugh everytime.

A True cult classic if ever there was one. Will be remembered long after the likes of Friends and Will & Grace have been tossed into the pit of TV oblivion. It just goes to show that you don't need great special effects and top rate Hollywood actors to make great TV. The cheapness of it is part of it's charm!