Notoriously, and entirely appropriately, the original outline for Doug Naylor and Rob Grant's comedy sci-fi series Red Dwarf was sketched on the back of a beer mat. When it finally appeared on our television screens in 1988 the show had clearly stayed true to its roots, mixing jokes about excessive curry consumption with affectionate parodies of classic SF. Indeed, one of the show's most endearing and enduring features is its obvious respect for the conventions of SF, even as it gleefully subverts them. The scenario owes something to Douglas Adams's satirical Hitch-Hiker's... Guide, something to The Odd Couple and a lot more to the slacker SF of John Carpenter's Dark Star. Behind the crew's constant bickering there lurks an impending sense that life, the universe and everything are all someone's idea of a terrible joke. Later series broadened the show's horizons until at last its premise was so diluted as to be unrecognisable, but in the earlier episodes contained in this box set the comedy is witty and intimate, focusing on characters and not special effects. Slob Dave Lister (Craig Charles) is the last human alive after a radiation leak wipes out the crew of the vast mining vessel Red Dwarf (episode 1, "The End"). He bums around the spaceship with the perpetually uptight and annoyed hologram of his dead bunkmate, Arnold Rimmer (Chris Barrie, the show's greatest comedy asset) and a creature evolved from a cat (dapper Danny John Jules). They are guided rather haphazardly by Holly, the worryingly thick ship's computer (lugubrious Norman Lovett). --Mark Walker [show more]
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Please note this is a region 2 DVD and will require a region 2 or region free DVD player in order to play. Notoriously, and entirely appropriately, the original outline for Doug Naylor and Rob Grant's comedy sci-fi series Red Dwarf was sketched on the back of a beer mat. When it finally appeared on our television screens in 1988 the show had clearly stayed true to its roots, mixing jokes about excessive curry consumption with affectionate parodies of classic SF. Indeed, one of the show's most endearing and enduring features is its obvious respect for the conventions of SF, even as it gleefully subverts them. The scenario owes something to Douglas Adams's satirical Hitch-Hiker's Guide, something to The Odd Couple and a lot more to the slacker SF of John Carpenter's Dark Star. Behind the crew's constant bickering there lurks an impending sense that life, the universe and everything are all someone's idea of a terrible joke.Later series broadened the show's horizons until at last its premise was so diluted as to be unrecognisable, but in the earlier episodes contained in this box set the comedy is witty and intimate, focusing on characters and not special effects. Slob Dave Lister (Craig Charles) is the last human alive after a radiation leak wipes out the crew of the vast mining vessel Red Dwarf (episode 1, "The End"). He bums around the spaceship with the perpetually uptight and annoyed hologram of his dead bunkmate, Arnold Rimmer (Chris Barrie, the show's greatest comedy asset) and a creature evolved from a cat (dapper Danny John Jules). They are guided rather haphazardly by Holly, the worryingly thick ship's computer (lugubrious Norman Lovett). --Mark Walker Actors: Chris Barrie, Craig Charles, Danny John-Jules, Robert Llewelyn, Norman LovettDirectors: Ed ByeLanguage: English, EsperantoSubtitles For The Hearing Impaired: EnglishNumber of discs: 4
All 24 episodes from the first four seasons of the popular sci-fi comedy series. In 'The End', Dave Lister (Craig Charles) awakes from 3 million years in suspended animation to find he is the last living human being. 'Future Echoes' sees the crew getting glimpses of the future when Red Dwarf breaks the speed of light. 'Balance of Power' finds Rimmer (Chris Barrie) unsettled by the possibility that Lister might attain a higher rank than him. 'Waiting for God' sees Lister take on the mantle of a God, and discover that he is responsible for a huge war. 'Confidence and Paranoia' has Lister's pneumonia mutate in such a way that his hallucinations become solid. In 'Me 2', Rimmer creates a duplicate of himself - and although the honeymoon period is blissful, the relationship eventually takes a rather bitter turn. In 'Kryten' the crew of Red Dwarf answer a distress call from three woman survivors of a crashed spaceship, only to discover their long-dead bodies being waited on by android butler Kryten. 'Better Than Life' finds the crew living out their fantasies with a virtual reality computer game. 'Thanks for the Memory' sees Lister, Cat (Danny John-Jules) and Rimmer lose all memory of the preceding four days. 'Stasis Leak' has the crew discover a doorway to the past, enabling Lister to romance Kochanski (Chloë Annett) - and Rimmer to warn himself about the future. 'Queeg' sees Holly (Norman Lovett) replaced by a much stricter back-up computer. In 'Parallel Universe', a faster-than-light drive propels the crew into a universe where they meet their female counterparts. In 'Backwards', the crew return to what they think is Earth, but find time is behaving oddly, and loads of things begin to un-happen. In 'Marooned', Lister and Rimmer find themselves stranded on an arctic moon with no food (except a pot noodle and a can of dogfood), no heating and little hope of survival. In 'Polymorph', a chameleonic genetic mutant gets aboard the ship and terrorises the crew with non-stop slobbering horrors. In 'Timeslides', the crew travel back in time thanks to a mutated developing fluid that allows people to walk into photographs. In 'Bodyswap', Rimmer and Lister swap bodies to help Lister lose weight, but Rimmer won't swap back after the experiment. In 'The Last Day', Kryten discovers that he only has 24 hours of operating time left, so the boys decide to give him a great, last day. In 'Camille', Kryten (Robert Llewellyn) finds love. The crew battle a DNA beast in 'DNA'. In 'Justice', Rimmer is in deep trouble when the crew stumble across Justice World, where everyone is judged for their crimes. 'Dimension Jump' features an alternative universe where Rimmer is a hero, while in 'White Hole', Holly powers down the ship leaving it drifting towards certain doom. Finally, in 'Meltdown', the crew visit Waxworld where old waxdroids in the theme world have embarked on a fruitless war between different factions.
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