Dave have released a tease of Red Dwarf X, which returns for a six-episode series later this year, following the success of those atrocious "Back to Earth" specials three years ago. As a lapsed fan of Red Dwarf (which was one of my favourite sitcoms as a teenager), I was braced for the worst... but this wasn't so bad. It immediately helps that you can hear a live studio audience laughing along, and the middle-aged cast don't look as ridiculous as I was imagining they might. Chris Barrie's the only one to have noticeably aged, while Danny John-Jules may have cracked the secret of immortality. I'm at a loss to explain why Kryten looks like he's had a nose job, though! And it suits the show that Lister's getting older, as that could lend a greater sense of melancholy to his situation.
This isn't really a trailer, more a selection of random and very short clips, but I liked the opening joke of Kryten unwittingly aggravating Lister about being the last man alive, and it looks and feels more like the show I loved in its heyday. I hope this will finally help erase very bad memories of late-'90s and '00s Red Dwarf. A friend of mine attended one of the studio recordings earlier this year, and gave this opinion: "it's better than anything we've seen in Series VI onwards, but isn't up to the standards of early-'90s Dwarf."
At this stage in the show's remarkable 24-year history, I'll take that. How about you?
