Red Dwarf

A few weeks ago Amazon announced free Instant Video (previously Video on Demand) for many movie and TV shows for Amazon Prime members.  I had never considered Prime since its main benefit was free shipping and with my massive wish list I could always get above the $25 needed for free supersaver shipping.  After looking over the free video offerings, I decided to sign up for Prime.  There's tons of British shows (including Doctor Who, Black Adder, and Yes, Minister) along with a decent documentary selection.  For $6.50 a month, it's got the kind of shows I like that I can't get not having Netflix.

Now Red Dwarf is a British show I once loved.  I have seen the first five seasons more times than I can count.  It is the story of a slob who is the last living human stuck on a derelict spaceship with a hologram of his dead pain in the ass roommate and a creature evoled from a cat.  The rest of the crew was killed by radiation three million years earlier.  There's a senile ship's computer for several of the seasons and a robot.  I was excited to see the later seasons were available free on prime since I had only seen 6-8 once on PBS and had never seen Back to Earth.  I ended up disappointed.

Season 6 is not to bad although it lacks the computer who was a character I enjoyed.  Season 7 was pretty bad.  Rimmer was written out in the only good episode of the season and was replaced with Lister's old crush Kochansk (the addition of Kochanski being incompatible with the original premise of the show).  Season 8 has nanobots resurrecting the entire crew of the original ship with the main cast being arrested and held as prisoners.  This season is all about special effects and slapstick accompanied by one of the most intrusive laugh-tracks I ever heard.  It's like the producers knew it was no longer funny and felt the need to overdo the canned laughter.  Back to Earth (season 0 on Amazon Instant Video) was utter crap.  It was shot as a comedy-drama with the crew ending up on Earth in 2000 and discovering they are characters in a TV show called Red Dwarf.  They skipped the laugh-track all together so I had no clue what if anything of this mess was supposed to be funny.  Even the cast looked like they were tired and didn't want to be there.

A look at Wikipedia shows that after season 6 the co-creators broke up leaving Doug Naylor in sole charge.  Obviously Rob Grant was the smart one who realized continuing the show after that was beating a dead horse.  Naylor on the other hand seems content to keep flogging away.  They are planning to make more episodes which I will not be watching. 

To summarize:  First six seasons are worth watching after that you are just wasting hours of your life you will never get back.