RED DWARF: Why we love it in the first place
Red Dwarf is back. Well, it is for a paltry three episodes, anyway. Hopefully this resurgence (review coming soon) will lead to a new series if the sci-fi comedy classic, or at least get that film version made at long last. The show has had a dedicated following from pretty much the start back in the 80s, and thus it must have something going for it. What is it that makes Red Dwarf so watchable? The old series still stands up today as engaging, funny and enjoyable, even with the low production standards and very limited budget.
The fact that the last man alive is a Scouser with a penchant for curry is something that hit home with fans throughout the original run of the show. The character of Dave Lister is a marvellous everyman. Where so many sci-fi shows have a chiselled hero-type as their lead character, surrounded by gorgeous people doing incredible things, Red Dwarf has a sarcastic Hologram, an oddly programmed robot and a clothes-obssessed Cat as the companions of the last man alive. They spent their time irritating one another and getting into all manner of intergalactic scrapes that have become much-loved staples of many DVD shelves across the planet.
For me, my favourite Red Dwarf episode is ‘Marooned’, much of which consists of Lister and Rimmer trapped alone in a dead ship on an inhospitable planet. A very strong character piece, the humour in that episode is bittersweet and tinged with sadness, much like the rest of Red Dwarf. The exchanges between those two characters are sublime, getting beneath the wit and the laughs for a moment and revealing something more of the characters themselves. It is a show about carrying on, even when everything else has gone to hell. Things may be faulty, but you get by. The people around you may get your back up, but when they are all you have, you make do.
Here’s hoping these specials see a resurgence in the fortunes of the Red Dwarf story, and we get a satisfactory finale at last.