Hyperdrive Series 2 News Posted by John Hoare on 8th July 2007, 20:12 Coming this Thursday 12th @ 9:30pm on BBC TWO. Synopsis of first episode, Green Javelins here, along with a clip. And if you’re wondering why this news story has no of my tedious opinions in it – yes, I fully intend to give the show a proper second chance. Remind me what an absolute stupid twat I am at around 10:00pm on Thursday, will you?
I already gave it a proper second chance. That was episode 2. Quick glimpses of later episodes repeatedly confirmed the show’s utter shitness. Of course, it could be completely different for series 2.
Hyperdrive just has this terribly conceived universe. It’s all buying planets off EBay and characters stunned into silence at the discovery of an orgy were everbody still has their clothes on. And Miranda Hart’s character… spends the episode trying to seduce Henderson, is shocked by the orgy and then when Henderson suggests they have sex she runs away hurt by his desire to… have the sex she was trying to get for the previous 25 minutes. And Henderson feels guilty for.. em… yeah. And it’s the future! Orgy with clothes on? What’s wrong with that? A lot of the crew were there – does this mean Henderson and Teal (I think) have sexual attitudes not in keeping with the rest of the human race? Does this mean these indivduals are sex-mad and Henderson and Teal are the norm? And why did the writers think this was a good way to resolve the episode? Questions like this go on and on, the universe is crap. Given that we are post- Futurama (good) and post-Nebulous (not great but at least there’s a vague Quatermass pastiche going on) time, I can say in terms of quality and timing that Hyperdrive is the Johnny English of silly sci-fi.
And I’m actually quite annoyed that Still Game is given the 10 o’clock news slot. Crude as it is, the last series was a big improvement on Series 4 and it got around a million more viewers than Hyperdrive did. Plus, Mock the Week should really be on radio given that nothing visual actually happens.
Johnny English was a great British entertainment film. I watched it again recently and it really was rather good.
>Johnny English was a great British entertainment film. I watched it again recently and it really was rather good. I don’t think I can let that pass.
Don’t panic–it’s never as bad as you imagine it will be. Okay, sometimes it’s worse, but my point stands nevertheless. Besides, someone’s got to help warn everyone else away from thsi show, right?
I’m going out, and recording BB and House – which means I’ll miss it. So I shall read the responses online and then decide whether to bother with the repeat…
Don’t worry, I’ll be suffering with you. The rewards of ripping it to shreds are too great to pass up.
Oh dear. Some things that struck me: * Nick Frost was ok, but was let down by having NO JOKES. AT ALL. * There was far too much Miranda Hart, which was made worse by her having NO JOKES. AT ALL. * Kevin Eldon was just Kevin Eldon, and he was literally the only thing that raised any amounts of chuckles from me, but was mainly because he was allowed to speak gibberish in his Klanty voice. (The ‘knee of anger’ made me lol) * That fucking ‘pilot’ thing is terrible. FUCK OFF. * Everyone else is just a foot note. A painfully unfunny footnote. * They completely ripped off one of the worst episodes of Red Dwarf with York’s clone sacrificing himself in an escape pod. Lazy lazy LAZY UNFUNNY FUCK FUCK. * The CG was *terrible*. Red Dwarf series VII effects kick the shit out of Hyperdrive’s, and it was done in a man’s bedroom on a budget of practically nothing. It’s just so unforgivably lazy. What an awful waste of a series.
Yeah, what the fuck was with ripping off Beyond A Joke? Sacrificing yourself as a plot point is as old as the hills – but the way it was done (even the shot crashing onto the surface – and more importantly, the fact that it was a character’s double) – why? WHY? And if you’re going to rip off Red Dwarf, at least have the decency to rip off a good episode, rather than one of the worst ever made. Eldon was literally the only thing that raised a smile – but that doesn’t actually make the show any good. At all. Second chance. Failed. Not watching again.
What pisses me off is: Space sitcom = good. Kevin Eldon = good. Nick Frost = good. Cecil & Riley = good. (I can’t say I know a lot of their output – but some of their Black Books episodes were great.) HOW is this show so bad? How did such a talented cast and writers manage to make a show so poor? Also: what the hell is with the characters of Jeffers and Vine? What purpose do they serve? It sure as hell isn’t being interesting or funny, or in fact important to the series at all. Jesus. Bad comedy annoys me. But bad comedy when it clearly has talent working on it annoys me even more. Also: some of the CGI shots were OK, especially near the start. But some of them – especially the Green Javelins stuff at the end – was fucking appalling. Dwarf was doing stuff a million times better back in 1988! Sure, the shots themselves were less complex – mainly just ship flybys – but my God, don’t stretch beyond your budget and create a pile of shit.
I was actually going along with the show till about halfway through and then it all fell apart for me. The CGI at the end was awful and I agree with the laziness of it all especially with the ‘If I can’t have you, no one can’ plotting.
The Beyond a Joke thing really gets me. People are always too quick to accuse shows of plagiarising other shows – I mean, come on, some people genuinely seem to think that Cassandra in Who is a fucking Red Dwarf rip – but the similarities here are rather stark. Pod? Check. Sacrifice? Check. Crash? Check. A FUCKING CHARACTER’S DOUBLE? Check. If it wasn’t a conscious lift, I’m pretty certain it was an unconscious one.
Well, now I have to see it just to join in. Bollocks. After doing bits of Marooned and the middle section of Emohawk (and taking three times as long to do it) in the last series, this comes as no surprise….
This show was an utter waste of my fucking time. How is it utter shite like this gets made and we get nothing new Red Dwarf wise?…
I haven’t watched this since the first episode. I know you should give things a fair crack of the whip, but that episode was so lousy I wasn’t prepared to waste another 28 minutes of my life. And now I can’t join in this most recent bitch. Gah. Can’t believe that a show that involves two people from one of the greatest comedy sketches in history (namely “Train Ignoring”) can be so bad.
Guess I was right to not bother watching after the first scene. I see the effects shots at the beginning and the ship sets and I just want to cry because they’re being wasted. It buggers belief (not ‘beggars’, buggers) that any money at all is spent on this series. If Dwarf ever returned no-one would tune in because, if they’d never watched it, they would be expecting it to be as bad as this!
Hoorah, Series II, it just has to be better than Series I, people learn by their mistakes…. There just has to be more jokes, better effects, better use of the ‘better’ cast…… Damn: Wrong again, this was dire.. If anything, much of it was worse than Ser I.. To be fair, there did seem more jokes, however, they were just not funny.. When the funniest part of the show is a bloke doing stupid voices, I dont give out much hope for improvement.. Dissapointment all round…..
> When the funniest part of the show is a bloke doing stupid voices, I dont give out much hope for improvement.. You wouldn’t like Fonejacker then.
I hardly ever miss comedy shows starring someone I like in it, who is in other shows in my DVD collection. But Despite Frost and Eldon, I just havnt bothered tuning in yet.
Yes, me… There was actually a marked improvement, still not good enough, but I’ve seen far worse shows than tonights…
I’ve heard someone else on another forum – someone who didn’t like last week’s – say that they caught the last nine minutes of tonight’s episode, and laughed a lot. Looks like I’ll be catching the repeat, then…
