I used to be a big fan of the British sci-fi comedy series Red Dwarf (series 1 to 6 anyway though series 7 had its moments) but I haven’t watched it for a long time. However I was aware that there had been a failed US pilot although I had never seen it, a few days ago I came across it while browsing on youtube (I won’t link because of copyright issues but it should be fairly easily found).
I wasn’t expecting much because I kept hearing how utterly awful and unfunny it was but I have to admit…I kind of liked it, it was interesting to see the different versions of the characters, I thought it was pretty amusing and made me genuinely laugh out loud on at least one occassion. Sure its not as good as the British original but it really wasn’t that bad. The pilot was different enough to keep my interest but the main thing I would say about it is that if they were just going to have the same scripts as the UK original series then there wasn’t much point having a US remake in the first place, but we’ll never know what they had planned for future episodes.
Maybe it was just because I had such low expectations but I don’t think it deserves the hate it has received, though I tend to think that about quite a few movies and TV shows, while they aren’t great they aren’t awful either, but on the internet everything seems to be either the best thing ever or the worst thing ever with no middle ground.
I was just wondering if anyone else has seen it and what they thought?
I heard about it quite a long time ago, and I’m glad I downloaded it. I think its cute – a nice re-imagining of the original.
When I’d heard of it, i thought – they should have one British character, Holly, and it should be a woman from the beginning, I know, they should use Jane Leeves, and they did! It great that they brought Kryten to start with. Did you know, the UK production got to keep the Kryten costume for use in the British series.
I haven’t seen the second US pilot, which replaces the Cat character, from African-American man (Hinton Battle) with a female cat played by Terry Farrell. Not to denigrate how beautiful Terry Farrel is, or how good of an actress she is, playing normal humans or space aliens, but that substitution ruins everything. Its the “Boys from the Dwarf”, lost in space, desperately looking for females. They can’t have one on the ship with them.
I showed it to my sister, and she said, “Alright, I know you enjoy the British version, but what’s the point of this US version? It will never be as edgy as Star Trek: NextGen, or as irreverent as South Park. So what’s the point?”
I didn’t even realise that there was a second pilot! I’m going to have to try to find that one on youtube as well, thank you.
And yes I agree, the sarcastic somewhat ditzy Holly was one of the better parts of the pilot, though I always much preferred female Holly to male Holly in the British version as well (though that may be a result of first being introduced to Red Dwarf in series 4 when she was female, so I just thought she had always been that way).
I actually think the thing that took me out of the story most was Lister being markedly taller than Rimmer, in the UK version its the other way around. Oh and also changing his mind and being willing to tell them where he had hidden the cat just because Kochanski made goo-goo eyes at him, kind of negated an otherwise admirable part of his character.
The first couple of episodes of the original Red Dwarf didn’t impress me much. The jokes were obvious and The plot, while original seemed underdeveloped. Only when I watched later episodes where the characters were developed and the jokes much less obvious was it worthwhile.
I watched the original series and I agree that the first few episodes seemed weak. But later I happened to read the novelization, which was written by the same two guys who created the series. It turns out there was a lot of back story that couldn’t be fit inside thirty minute episodes. When you add it back in through the novel, the early episodes seem a lot better.
It’s annoying that they picked tall and handsome Craig Bierko to play Lister. It would be as ridiculous as, I do’t know, remaking The IT Crowd and getting Joel McHale to replace Chris O’Dowd, or something.
