what is your opinion of "Red Dwarf"

[JamesTC]

Is it still the case on the DVD that if you want to watch the 'extended' versions of episodes from S7 they take the laugh track out?

Sinister.

Yeah. The blu-ray too. They only ever recorded the audience laughter for the broadcast versions and they seemed set against using laugh tracks so opted to just go without.

[RetroRobot]

What makes you choose 6 over 4 or 5?

Usually 4 and 5 come between 3 and 6, I reckon.

Glib response but I thought saying 3 to 6 included them! 3 through to 6?

[Pink Gregory]

Usually 4 and 5 come between 3 and 6, I reckon.

Glib response but I thought saying 3 to 6 included them! 3 through to 6?

ah, me no read good, thought it sounded odd.

[Phoenix Lazarus]

I didn't watch it much, but I recall watching one where they time-travelled back to America in the early twentieth century, and I found that episode quite funny.

[Better Midlands]

How many of you knew Craig Charles from Robot Wars rather than Red Dwarf

I'm old enough that I think when RD started I recognised him as 'that Scouse poet guy'.

[The Mollusk]

I maintain that Krytie TV is the nadir of the whole show.

[JamesTC]

Timewave is the nadir. It is utterly perplexing how it turned out the way it did.

[Catalogue Trousers]

Opinion? First 4 series very good. 5 and 6 okay. Everything else complete shite (although, okay, the 'Munchkins' song is a nice bit of silly absurd comedy).

Red Dwarf Shuffle? Away and throw shite at yerself.

[Catalogue Trousers]

Did an episode of this have a time warp that made a bar-room brawl happen in reverse, or am I getting mixed up with something else?

yeah and Cat done a poo but it went RIGHT BACK UP HIM lolz

[JamesTC]

Backwards was my favourite episode as a kid* but Cat jumping up from the bush scared the shit out of me. It was my childhood equivalent of the Daleks.



^{*now it is Back to Reality, obviously}

[Dr Rock]

First few series were pretty good, slowly became very missable.

[Pink Gregory]

don't really know what the guy in the pub in Backwards could have been saying for a beer order to come out as 'errrsgib'

[Sexton Brackets Drugbust]

don't really know what the guy in the pub in Backwards could have been saying for a beer order to come out as 'errrsgib'

Bitter

[Kankurette]

Only later Red Dwarf bit that made me laugh was Rimmerworld.

I remember hearing about the actor who played Cat having a bit of a row with his bin-men.  I suspect they were emptying them without checking if he was in there scavenging.

Danny John-Jules' nephew played for Arsenal. And Sheffield Wednesday.

[Rev+]

As some of us of a certain age have mentioned, there was something just so exciting about a new sci-fi comedy cropping up when it started.  The opening title was great too - bleak, lonely, epic sounding, but ultimately just someone doing a bit of painting.  There's a bit of tension going into the first scene when you wonder if this will actually try to be funny at all, and what kind of funny it'll be shooting for.  By the end of that first episode you've realised that alright, it'll always reach for the gag closest to it, but that's fine because it's just so pleasingly weird.

I'm also firmly in the 'first two series and then everything else' camp.  The HEY HEY IT'S FUNTIME opening titles for series 3 genuinely fucked me off, and 'Backwards' was so shit I nearly stopped watching after that.  Can't blame them for shooting for a bigger audience, but it had already lost something at that point.  Of course, next week you had 'Marooned', which as recently discussed, is the absolute tits.  After that it was just hits and misses, but I'd watch it because...  well, telly.  Fuck all else on at time, and maybe it'd be a good one.

[Matthew Dawkins Jub Jub]

Only later Red Dwarf bit that made me laugh was Rimmerworld.Danny John-Jules' nephew played for Arsenal. And Sheffield Wednesday.

I just shouted "bullshit!" in the same elated way as Tobias Funke hearing about a raccoon in the yard.

[Dead Soon]

Only began watching this just after lockdown started in March '20. I was finding anything to watch on the erstwhile seldom used Netflix account on one of the many anxiety filled, insomnia ridden nights.

The concept of enforced isolation hit extraordinarily close to home as a result and it was genuinely hypnotic in how documentary-like it had unintentionally become at that specific time of life. I watched the first two episodes in March then sat on it until later that summer because the parallels with the real world situation were hard to stomach.

While I resumed watching up until... hmm, series 4? (yes I'm firmly in the 'first two series only' camp) it will be nigh on impossible to shake off the association that this show has with the early bleakness of the pandemic.

[GMTV]

Bloody loved series 6. Just watched it recently post a minor surgery to cheer myself up.

[FredNurke]

Only began watching this just after lockdown started in March '20. I was finding anything to watch on the erstwhile seldom used Netflix account on one of the many anxiety filled, insomnia ridden nights.

The concept of enforced isolation hit extraordinarily close to home as a result and it was genuinely hypnotic in how documentary-like it had unintentionally become at that specific time of life. I watched the first two episodes in March then sat on it until later that summer because the parallels with the real world situation were hard to stomach.

While I resumed watching up until... hmm, series 4? (yes I'm firmly in the 'first two series only' camp) it will be nigh on impossible to shake off the association that this show has with the early bleakness of the pandemic.

Coincidentally, I was watching Red Dwarf Quarantine (Rob Grant, Ed Bye, Paul Jackson and various special guests provide live commentary on series 1-3) at the same time. I'm pleasantly surprised to find that the videos are still there.

[The Mollusk]

I remember hearing about the actor who played Cat having a bit of a row with his bin-men.  I suspect they were emptying them without checking if he was in there scavenging.

https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/uk-world-news/red-dwarf-star-danny-john-jules-968987

Had to double check I didn't dream the samurai sword detail

[Mr Vegetables]

I can't watch the Dave ones anymore because something about them makes me anxious; like it's pretending the inevitability of death isn't there in a way that makes it all very depressing. Like the good bits of Red Dwarf are very depressing as well, but it's a sincere kind of depressing. It's like it stops being able to acknowledge something that was always at its heart, perhaps.

I wish they'd just kept going with baffling topical references to 1980s Britain, irrespective of when the episodes were made or supposed to be set. I would have found that to be quite endearing.

[Cold Meat Platter]

I didn't know wtf Ishtar was for years afterwards.

[idunnosomename]

Can of Worms was alright as well I suppose. I don't know why it didn't have more preamble with the lady Cat before we instantly find out she's a polymorph (not even a spoiler, it's like hey here's this character next scene hey she's a polymorph. particularly annoying because it was a great performance as a female version of Cat). the intro bit with personality machine, what was the point of that? Not funny, all predictable, and not really a setup for anything that happens. again decent idea but not well spread over the 27 minutes

Not looking forward to XII tbh but I am so morbidly interested in how shit Time Wave is I will slog through it.

[JamesTC]

I wish they'd just kept going with baffling topical references to 1980s Britain, irrespective of when the episodes were made or supposed to be set. I would have found that to be quite endearing.

They do at least still use videos in the Dave era.

[JamesTC]

Not looking forward to XII tbh but I am so morbidly interested in how shit Time Wave is I will slog through it.

The first half of XII is patchy. The second half is wonderful.

[Oh, Nobody]

https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/uk-world-news/red-dwarf-star-danny-john-jules-968987

Had to double check I didn't dream the samurai sword detail

Ah that's why I remembered it as him beheading a binman.

[ishantbekeepingit]

Never really liked it.  Very weak gags performed tediously.

Watched 'Marooned' the other day based on forum recommendation.

"All we have left is dog food and pot noodle.  I know what we're eating last."
(beat)
(another beat)
"Pot noodle is rubbish!"

And this is the series at its supposed best?

[H-O-W-L]

 Call me a prick but I hate Red Dwarf at about the midpoint of Series 4 even if I'll admit some of the best episodes are probably beyond that point. I was involved in a rewatch on here back in like 2020 but I tapped out at that point. Maybe I was in a bad mood but I remember one episode, I think it was Camille or DNA, where I just tapped out because it had become proper CBBC. Don't get me wrong I think there's enjoyment further on, but I really loved the working-class bog-standard shit-and-shingles space trucker environs and scenarios mixed with Adams-esque scifi weirdery/pseudohorror of the early show, and the latter episodes becoming innately-wacky Sci-Fi funnies just kind of sucked it all away for me. The sci-fi concepts in the early seasons are treated with relative analysis in contrast.

It felt like the line between the Judge Dredd comics and the 1995 Judge Dredd movie, to me; something was just lost in locomotion.

[Pink Gregory]

Call me a prick but I hate Red Dwarf at about the midpoint of Series 4

Yeah thinking about it I don't love S4.  Looking it up, only Justice and Dimension Jump are the ones that stick out.  They become a bit too reliant on 'alternative versions of the cast' after it works so well in the final ep of S3, even if Ace Rimmer is a slightly more developed idea.  Meltdown is barely Red Dwarf at that point.  S5 kind of picks it up again to an extent.

[Phoenix Lazarus]

Does anyone know which episode ends up with the others beating up one of them in the street on earth, near a fence?