Just The Snide Remarks News Posted by John Hoare on 4th February 2005, 00:43 A review of Just The Shows. Firstly, the wrong facts: “The creators of the science-fiction sitcom should have been laughed at, escorted out of BBC’s London studios and thrown into the Thames River.” – Barring the river bit, this is pretty much what happened. “eight series have been completed, a ninth is planned” – No. “a movie is currently being filmed” – Also no. “In comparison, Series III and IV have had some money thrown at them.” – Again: no. “A new character is introduced in the cynical robot Kryten…” – He first appeared in Series 2. The fact that we once said the Series 1 DVD had each episode on twice has NO BEARING AT ALL. Secondly, the wrong opinions: “How did a thoroughly implausible show like Red Dwarf manage to slip past BBC television executives?” – This obsession with implausibility is odd. What do you actually mean? Since when was every BBC show ever made realistic? I can think of plenty more far-out shows than Dwarf that the BBC made – in fact, it’s bringing one of them back this Spring… “As the first two series show, it gets off to a slow start and hasn’t aged well” – No. I love Series 1, but can see why some others might not be so keen – but Series 2 is up there with the best. And what do you mean by hasn’t aged well? In what way? Have the jokes got less funny? “A new character is introduced in the cynical robot Kryten…” – An odd choice of word, there. Cynical? I suppose he can be sometimes, but it’s not a major character trait, particuarly in III. Odd. “…while several episodes are filmed off the ship and include basic special effects” – Basic special effects? Some fucking wonderful special effects, thanks – and they’ve been there since Series 1, not started with III. And they started going off the ship in Series 2. “The writing also improves and hits its peak during season four. If you’re not laughing at Cat trying to fry eggs with a bicycle-powered hair dryer while asking Lister if he wants his “permed or blow-dried” then you’re out of your smeggin’ mind.” – Not that great a joke, surely. How does it compare to many, many, many jokes in Series 2? “I’d prefer chicken.” It’s a terribly cliched and unfair thing to say, but it’s almost as though he hasn’t watched Series 2 properly at all… “a show that cleverly walks a line between science-fiction piss-take and homage” – There are piss-takes in Dwarf. There are also homages. But both are fairly rare, and neither is the point of the entire show. Which is: to make a funny science fiction series. The fact that I now disagree with at least one thing in each article on G&T has NO BEARING AT ALL. Yes, there’s no news.
“The creators of the science-fiction sitcom should have been laughed at, escorted out of BBC’s London studios and thrown into the Thames River.” Apart from the whole Manchester/London thing, it’s a fair way from TVC to the Thames…
It’s quite depressing reading ‘reviews’ like that. They obviously only watched one or maybe two episodes from each series, and went into it disliking Dwarf to start with. Oh, and series II is maybe the best series (in my view, while Parallel Universe isn’t as good, the first 5 episodes are finer than all of I & IV and much of III & VI).
The cynical robot Kryten?! I can’t think of a less cynical character in the show. Perhaps it was next to ‘clinical’ in his/her sell-checker.
Okay, so cynical clearly doesn’t fit…but he also describes Kryten’s character as “the rebellious robot.” Now, other than about 2 minutes of the end of a single episode in a series within which Kryten wasn’t even one of the main characters, there’s very little to recommend Kryten as “rebellious.” Well, actually I guess there’s a bit of rebellion in Camille…granted…but I agree with theperformingmonkey in saying that this reviewer must only have watched several episodes and wrote a general review of all four series from that.
