Hyperdrive Tonight! News Posted by John Hoare on 11th January 2006, 08:34 10:00pm, BBC TWO! That is all.
I’ll be there – gotta love Nick Frost. >But its the final lost tonight! Luckily for me, S4C shows Lost an hour after C4, so I’ll be able to both watch *and* tape both shows!
You don’t really want to miss the last two Losts if you’ve been watching the series (actually it’s one long episode but it always gets split into two, probably to fit in more adverts…). I’ve already seen it and up to episode 9 of the second series so I’ll be watching Hyperdrive. I’ve decided that I’m gonna be really narrow-minded with Hyperdrive, meaning that if I don’t like the first episode I’m not going to stick with the series. I don’t want to put myself through pain every week hoping for something good (although I’m sure watching Lost weekly must feel like that sometimes..). If it’s crap it’ll be a real waste of Kevin Eldon and Nick Frost,
Oh God… that was terrible. As I’ve said, Eldon managed to make a decent fist of it, but the rest of the cast just mumbled their way through aimlessly shuffling about. The plot was crap and there just wasn’t any jokes. Anywhere. God, I wanted this to be good.
Pffffft. The odd funny bit (the message to the six year old, and the talking gun at the end was OK), but it doesn’t show that much promise. It just hasn’t got a *funny* atmosphere. And I got bored halfway through. I’ll stick with it, but I’m not hopeful.
Captain York saying “What the ff….” when the first aleins arrived was good. But no gags of which to speak, really. And I’m really dissapointed with Nick Frost, because I actually expected him to be good. Obviously he’s more suited to being a supporting actor. IMO, of course.
STOP DOING THAT FUCKING GREEN WING FAST CAMERA THROUGH CORRIDORS THING, IT’S NOT STYLISH, ITS NOT EDGAR WRIGHT-ISH, IT’S JUST CRAP. Some actual jokes would be nice, too. John, you pinpointed about the only two things that made me chuckle – the message to the kid was very Nick Frost, while the gun was very Hitchhiker’s. But the rest was just a mish-mash of existing sci-fi/comedy cliches (which I know doesn’t extend much past Dwarf and H2G2 in the main, but a lot of sketch shows and stuff have done Trek or Wars spoofs over the years), without any real gags. And what the FUCK were the Morwenna Banks bits about? If they were an attempt to do a Holly, they failed miserably, because they weren’t funny AT ALL. And that stupid grinning woman in the silver helmet was just… well… stupid…
The thing about Red Dwarf is that, whatever you think of The End, by the end of the episode you *knew* the characters. This just isn’t the case here. Also, you had far better jokes in The End, rose tinted spectacles aside.
STOP DOING THAT FUCKING GREEN WING FAST CAMERA THROUGH CORRIDORS THING, IT’S NOT STYLISH, ITS NOT EDGAR WRIGHT-ISH, IT’S JUST CRAP. Absolutely. That was just pointless.
I thought it was alright. I didn’t make me laugh out loud, but it wasn’t terrible. It would have worked much better with a half-decent plot.
I don’t really care about the plot. Especially in a first episode, it’s just not that important. The concentration should be on setting up the situation and characters. There *were* jokes in there… it’s just most of them didn’t make me laugh. Which annoys me, as I really wanted to like this.
Yeah, that was pretty absymal. The only thing that made me consider raising a smile was the lamp having a row with the alarm clock. I was rooting for this considering the personnel involved, but you couldn’t pay me to watch another episode. Hated the style of it. Hated the actor Kevin Eldon’s character. Detested the computer voice-over. Hated the sub-Space Vets plotline. Occasionally, I begin to wonder whether Red Dwarf I-VI really is as good as I remember. Then something like this comes along and I realise how much of an achievement it really was.
> Occasionally, I begin to wonder whether Red Dwarf I-VI really is as good as I remember. VII and VIII also piss all over Hyperdrive. As I expected it was a very Green Wing/Black Books in space venture, but sadly it’s worse than both shows, going off the first episode anyway. I was expecting Tamsin Grieg to walk round the corner. Actually, this probably would have helped as the cast were pretty crap, I have to say. Dwarf is safe. It’s crown isn’t about to be taken away quite yet. What am I saying, Dwarf will NEVER be bettered! Some good news, I just realised that the new Graham Linehan comedy, The I.T. Crowd, is gonna be a conventional sitcom! I’m praying that it’s great ’cause then it’ll prove all those ‘trad sitcom = dead’ folks wrong. If anyone can do it, Graham Linehan can. PLEASE let it be better than Hyperdrive!!
Isn’t Hyperdrive from the two guys who wrote the 3rd series of Black Books, i.e the one that wasn’t half as funny as the first two. Linehan rules o.k.
I thought the clone joke at the beginning, along with the aforementioned vid mesage and talking gun parts were probably the best. But yeah, the Green Wing-esque camera zooms were well dodgy, as was the character of Sandstrom. I thought the CG was notsobad, and Nick Frost, I thought, put in a fairly respectable performance. It’ll get better, I’m sure.
I actually liked it, and I like the so-called Green Wing style zooms – I used them in something I made.
I wouldn’t have minded them if there was any point to them. I’d rather the effort had been put into making some more jokes.
> Direct rip-offs of Polymorph annoyed me. Even down to the POV shot and animal noises. I thought that. Sadly, the few Dwarf rip-offs/homages/coincidences didn’t make me like the episode any more. Mentioning Graham Linehan’s new sitcom again, on the Ch4 website you can watch each episode, including the first, a week before it’s broadcast. That’s pretty good, I reckon. I hope the BBC do a lot of this sort of thing when they get their TV download service sorted.
I’m pretty sure it’s not a Polymorph rip, you know. I mean, how many films and TV shows have that kind of thing? Loads. It was done before Dwarf.
Regarding the speedy corridor moments, it could all be an elaborate attempt to avoid the “ooo, it’s a space ship but we only have one corridor” problem. Personally I think I’ll stick wth Hyperdrive- it’s better than a lot of other ‘comedies’, and even though they didn’t poke fun at Star Trekking Americans as a contrast, there were Zulus!
I didn’t think it was too bad. Admittedly, I can’t say I laughed once but em… yeah. The real question is: The End vs Hyperdrive Episode One?
