Red Dwarf

Red Dwarf is for anyone who enjoys a good laugh, and doesn't mind taking their science fiction with a grain of salt. Yet I think it's necessary to break the show up into three distinct parts.

Part One encompasses seasons one and two, which revolves primarily around the relationship of Rimmer and Lister. The first two seasons have a great low-budget appeal (most of the scenes take place on a couple of sets)and really mixes sharp wit and satire with a sense of loneliness.

Part Two is seasons three to six, and a new character, Kryten, is added to the list (this is not bad at all: Kryten gets a lot of the best lines). With the show's growing popularity and increased budget, the characters venture more and more outside their giant spaceship and explore "strange new worlds". Action and physical comedy take more and more precedence during these seasons. This is the high point of the show's run.

Part Three includes seasons seven and eight, and in all honesty, are best avoided. Several years elapsed between seasons and six and seven, and it shows. The show's creators made several mistakes in plot, story, and character, and the actors appear to be going through the motions, and much of their character traits, which made the show so great in the first place, are missing or warped in very disappointing ways.

Still, I highly recommend the first six years of this program. They're just the motley crew I'd want to be lost in space with.

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.

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).

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)

Where to start? The writing, the cast, the effects . . . superb.

Firstly, the writing. The situation is so unbelievable it works. Three million years out into deep space, with the unlikeliest crew you could find. And bizarre and funny things just keep happening. The secret? You might ask the same question of previous comedy greats. It just is.

The effects - especially since remastering - are breathtaking. I don't know how "true to life" it is, but it doesn't need to be. Seeing Starbug come crashing through the cargo bay doors is a joy to behold.

And the cast. Sensational. Chris Barrie (Rimmer) is the outstanding comedy actor of his generation. With the possible exception of Rowan Atkinson, I don't think there's a single man alive who could play the smeghead so well.

Equally, Craig Charles as Lister - a complete slob who is in fact the most decent person among the crew. A beautiful irony, and Charles focuses on the slob part so well that we tend to forget the character's decent side. This is not a bad thing - quite the reverse. When the decent side does appear, it is all the more prominent for it.

Norman Lovett (1-2, 8) and Hattie Hayridge (3-5) as Holly, the computer. I prefer Lovett's take, and don't fully understand why he was replaced. Hayridge did a fine job (indeed there's some moments that Lovett couldn't have done), but Lovett is the definitive Holly. He has the comic face for it.

Not forgetting Robert Llewellyn as the guilt-happy mechanoid Kryten, who overacts beautifully, as does Danny John-Jules as the vainest life form ever to have existed. Brilliant.

These ingredients made Red Dwarf amazing. Rob Grant and Doug Naylor's writing collaboration was a thing of beauty. As a team, they function superbly.

Unfortunately, the opposite is also true. Something's missing when they're not together. Series 7 had its moments, but was distinctly lacking - not least because Chris Barrie was in less than half the episodes. Series 8, it dropped even further. Barrie was back, but that was the only plus. Bringing the entire crew back was a very big mistake.

Overall? I'd say 8/10 for originality and sheer zaniness!