Red Dwarf

Red Dwarf is absolutely my favorite TV show. It's a British sitcom that is set 3 million years into the future in deep space where the human race is extinct and there is only one man still alive. His only friends are a hologram of his ex-roommate, an evolved cat, an android and a totally mental computer.

Originally I was introduced to this show because it ran on PBS on Friday night between Are You Being Served? and Monty Python's Flying Circus. Man I really miss the good old days of PBS. Anyway, I wasn't doing anything else at 11:30pm on Friday night other than waiting for my Flying Circus fix, so I watched it a couple of times. At first glance, I couldn't stand it. The series was obviously underfunded, extremely campy, everything was gray, and the first episode I ever saw "Confidence and Paranoia" was just plain weird. Incidentally, Confidence and Paranoia has been my least favorite episode of Red Dwarf for 15 years now, and will always be.

However, there were many Friday nights where I didn't have much to do at 11:30pm, so I did watch more episodes and I started to get just how funny this show actually was. I watched several episodes of the second season, which seemed to come together a lot better, and I was hooked. During most of the 90's, my collection of Red Dwarf consisted of episodes that I had copied off of PBS until later that year they started moving it around their schedule following a pledge drive campaign. I think I had about 20 episodes and no way to easily obtain more. Then I met the only other person who I didn't have to turn on to Red Dwarf ever in my life. Between me and Corey, we had every episode but one up to season 7 and we traded off making copies. I was missing most of seasons 1 and 6 and all of season 7, and an episode here and there, but I had all of season 4 & 5, which he didn't have. This happened some time in 2000, so there were only 9 episodes out of 52 that I hadn't seen. Then a couple of years later, they started releasing DVD's.

It was still not until a couple years ago that I actually got to see that last season 6 episode Rimmerworld and season 8 that I had been missing for years, but over a course of 4 years, I replaced my copied video tapes with DVD's and now not a week goes by without me watching at least some Red Dwarf. If you haven't seen them, you need to. For your own sanity, I'd suggest starting in season 2, which had some of the best comedy in the entire series. Nowadays trying to find these DVD's in the stores now is like trying to find a fart in a jacuzzi, so you are probably going to have to go to Amazon to actually buy these, but you should be able to get a discount and free shipping, so it won't cost you too much.