Language, Sex, Violence, Other?

I’ve been thinking a bit recently (yes, I’m fine, thanks) about how we define ‘adult’ in terms of media. No, I’m not talking about porn, although I suppose that is part of the issue. What I mean is they way in which both consumers and writers perceive what is and is not ‘adult’ content. This comes mostly from watching the recent episodes of ‘Torchwood: Miracle Day’, a self-confessed ‘adult’ Dr Who spin off.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m really enjoying ‘Miracle Day’, but I have long been of the view that Russel T. Davis, the executive producer, creator and head writer of Torchwood, is not a good writer. He’s a fantastic plotter and producer, but his technical writing is not good at all. Torchwood has always been guilty of falling into the trap of trying too hard to be ‘adult’. There have often been sequences in the stories in which everyone stops for a sex break, or plots revolving around sex itself, usually dealt with in a very crude and unsophisticated way.

My argument is that such open, often very forward and explicit attitudes towards sex is not indicative of ‘adult’ content, but is instead rather juvenile. There is no need for half of the cast to go off and have sex midway through the episode; it often does not actually add anything to the storyline, or the characters. It’s gratuitous, immature and often quite silly. Hardly adult.

Sadly, video games are usually the worst contenders for this. The Gears of War games are almost always given ‘mature’ or 18+ ratings, even though the games have no real depth or sophistication, just gore and violence. They are not ‘mature’ games, they are quite obviously immature. Similarly the portray of characters, particularly women, as gender stereotypes can hardly be defined as ‘adult’. Femme Fetalle characters wearing next to nothing being highly sexualised and often consciously objectivised is not adult, it’s childish.

I want to make clear that I’m not really taking about rating systems, but the perception of what is ‘adult’ content. However I think the point that needs to be made is that giving content that is not at all adult the label of ‘mature’ gives the wrong impression about what we consider mature. This is especially true when you consider the fact that the rating system is almost always ignored by consumers once children get above the age of 13 or so. Believe me, I’ve worked with 13 year old kids, they know all the language, they’ve seen and the gore and they know what a pair of boobs look like. If we are trying to protect teens from such explicit content, we are failing, so in giving such contend the label of ‘adult’ we are actually giving a very unhealthy impression of what it means to be mature.

Of course, this begs the question of what does it mean to be adult? This is actually a very difficult thing to define. When we describe media as ‘adult’ or ‘mature’ we mean content appropriate for adults, or mature people. Of course it is perfectly possible for teenagers to be as mature as many adults, but I don’t really want to get into that. It very much depends on the individual, which makes life hard for legislators, hence why they tend to draw a line in the sand at age 18. There is a difference between what is appropriate for children, young adults and adults and writers have to delicately balance their content to accommodate for their target audience.

Some content, themes and ideas are simply not appropriate for teenagers or children. Sometimes because it’s too complex (not wishing to sound patronising) or too dark. Often it’s simply that it deals with matters that they have no interest in or experience of, so it simple isn’t interesting or relevant to them. We should not use language, sex and violence as a measuring stick for these things.

To return to the example of Torchwood I mentioned earlier, I think Torchwood actually does a fantastic job of being quite mature. The current series deals with a phenomenon wherein the entire human race becomes immortal and digs straight into the consequences of that. People living through excruciatingly painful injuries and suffering on with no visible end in sight, a character who actually wants to die, but can’t, the moral issues now that murder no longer exists. Beyond that main premise, we have individuals using the disastrous situation to their own advantages, the power of the mob and a corporate conspiracy to name a few of the other themes that surface. It’s pretty dark. It explores some of the more unpleasant sides of human nature and of society. It’s pretty adult. It is not made more adult by random, all-together-now sex montages. In fact, next to the maturity of the rest of the series, those sequences actually look horribly out of place and almost comic.

The series is quite clearly targeted at adults. It’s not that teens should not watch it, it’s just that there’s a pretty good chance such things would go over their heads, or that they would, quite frankly, get bored by it. It’s not appropriate for less mature people simply because it’s not targeted at them.

In much the same way, a middle aged character who is going through a midlife crisis, dealing with divorce, debt and stress, might appeal to adults who can actually relate to such problems, whereas teens, even people in their twenties, would probably find that incredibly dull because they cannot relate to it. It deals with issues which do not mean anything to them. It’s adult in its content because it appeals to adults, not because it has content deemed inappropriate for children.

‘Adult’ or ‘mature’ content should not be a byword for sex, violence and gore, but simple an indication of the target audience. It’s is a message that the content is not meant to appeal to younger viewers and will probably not interest them. This is what Torchwood was designed for; Dr Who that appeal to the adult audience. That would not change if you got rid of the sex.

Video Games as a medium would take a massive leap forward if it started acknowledging its audience as adult and started building games with real adult content, games that, while being appropriate for kids, would be more appealing to adults, not because of the gore or the two dimensional female eye-candy, but because of the complex and sophisticated themes and ideas conveyed. This is becoming increasingly relevant as older generations get into gaming and the generations which have grown up with games, get older.

There’s nothing wrong with gory video games, or unsophisticated video games designed to be pieces of escapism. Just as there is nothing wrong with television which embraces gore and sex. Sex, in particular, forms quite a major part of most people’s lives. It is relevant and, when appropriate, can be used in a mature way. However, we need to get away from the perception that, for something to be ‘adult’ or ‘gritty’ or ‘dark’, it needs to have gore and sex and violence. We need to stop using these things as bywords for adult content. We need to grow up about our perceptions of adulthood.

5 mini-reviews from a long-haul flight

You may remember that, about a year ago, I wrote a collection of mini-reviews of the movies I watch on my long-haul flight to Australia. Well, now my year is Aus is over, so I too another long-haul fight and watched more movies! This time there are only five of them, because I slept more this time around.

Sucker Punch

There are sections of this movie that are really cliché; a group of five Femme Fetale characters fight their way through a series of fairly well trodden fantasy and sci-fi scenarios, including a Medieval Japanese setting, a classic Epic Fantasy with dragons and orcs, a steam/cyber-punk WWII with zombies (yeah, seriously) and space opera. Sounds ridiculous, right? It does actually make sense in context, however. Sucker Punch is about the mental battles of young, mentally unstable girl who is sexually abused by one of the orderlies. Of course the she imagines herself and her friends as Femme Fetales, of course the setting her mind invents for her are fairly standard fantasy and sci-fi settings: she’s only a young girl who is slightly insane, there’s not likely to be a huge amount of subtlety or originality.

The sections that bind the bizarre action sequences together, themselves a fantasy where the main character is forced into a brothel and attempts to escape with her fellow prisoners, is really well done and holds the rather stranger parts of the plot together really well. Sucker Punch is a really well told story, set out in many ways like a video game and using the medium of film superbly to show what is happening, rather than telling it. There is almost no dialogue for the opening sequence, for example, as all is shown through the actions on screen. In addition, the soundtrack is absolutely incredible.

Sucker Punch is a fantastic film; dark depressing, with a very melancholy ending. It’s a fascinating study of the psychologically troubled and also really fun. Well worth seeing and possibly the best movie I review today.

Insidious

I don’t usually get all that scared or disturbed by horror. Even Paranormal Activity didn’t set me on edge too badly, but after watching Insidious, I had to watch three episodes of the Simpsons to unfrey my nerves. Insidious does not do the standard horror trope of spattering the audience with gore and cheap frights. There are some things that jump out of the cupboard at us, but the real horror in Insidious is the subtle and the understated. It’s not quite as subtle as Paranormal Activity, but that is actually to its credit because it allows for some more visually interesting horror. There are some seriously creepy parts of this movie and it left me feeling really rather disturbed.

Horror, especially supernatural horror, is all about mystery. What we don’t know most certainly can hurt us and it terrifies us more when we don’t know what it is. Insidious falls down a little when it over-explains the phenomenon. It would have been creeper if there were no explanation, or at least a much less satisfactory explanation for the horror we are experiencing. Despite this, it leaves enough unexplained that there is some mystery towards the end and has enough mystery in the early part of the story that we are drawn in nicely. The very and in particular is extremely creepy, simply because we’re not told what happens after the end of the movie. Our imagination is left to run wild about what might happen. I hope any sequel will not follow directly from this story, because I actually don’t want to know what happens after the curtain closes.

If you like horror, especially subtle haunting horror (like Paranormal Activity), then you should probably check this one out, because it’s well worth seeing. Maybe switch off for the bit where they explain exact what is going on, because the movie is better without it.

Paul

I don’t usually review comedies because there’s never much to say. I really enjoyed Hot Fuzz and Shaun of the Dead; the two other spoof films by Pegg and Frost, and find their style a lot better than the usual movie spoofs like Scary Movie and Epic Movie. They tend to be far less silly and a bit more subtle. That being said, I didn’t enjoy Paul as much as the others. Don’t get me wrong, it was pretty good, I enjoyed the humour and had some good laughs, but it didn’t seem to have as many memorable moments as the other two. I think the fact that it was set in America meant that it did not feel as quintessentially British as the other two movies. Both Hot Fuzz and Shaun of the Dead play on some very English clichés, whereas Paul felt very much more American. It certainly aimed it’s satire in the direction of the deep south and the American intelligence agencies, which didn’t work quite as well as when Pegg and Frost aim their satire at their own country.

Pretty funny, entertaining, but not as good as Hot Fuzz or Shaun of the Dead. Worth seeing, I suppose.

I am Number 4

Well I knew my run of quite a few films from long haul flights that were at least decent if not great was going to end eventually. This really was pretty terrible – a very standard set of characters, a predictable plot, and terrible bit of writing just at the end there. Very disappointing. As far as Sci-Fi goes, this was very unoriginal and used its tropes very unimaginatively.

Is noone in Hollywood sick to death of old teenagers arriving at a high school in which there is a hot, but unpopular girl, a nerd who gets bullied and some jocks who are popular despite being complete assholes, and befriending the underdogs before leading them on some weird mission in which they both display some unknown level of courage, while the jocks are either won over or given some unnecessary form of justice? There are literally hundreds of movies with that exact plot. Has noone thought to give that one a rest, or at least do something interesting with it? I’m also sick and tired of villains in speculative fiction being so blatantly characterised as evil, right down to their appearance. Surely the whole point of speculative fiction is that it raises questions and ambiguity, rather than making things so appallingly obvious that we are not forced to speculate at all.

I am Number 4 is, I am afraid to say, mostly a waste of your time. It’s entertaining enough for an hour or two, but it’s nothing special, nothing interesting, and nothing new.

Tron

I’d actually heard mostly good things about Tron, unfortunately these people clearly lied to me, or I got the wrong end of the stick. Or maybe they don’t realise I don’t give a flying fuck about visuals unless the story is actually any good. In Tron the story was pretty woeful and the writing was atrociously sloppy. It failed miserably to establish what on earth was going on and to establish why we should care, either about the characters or anything else. The pacing was really terrible, to the point where I was drifting off at the point where the plot should have been reaching climax, because it had actually slowed down after the rather excessively speedy start.

Ok, fine, it looked great. I mean really, really great. The kind of visuals that look good now and will still look good in 20 years, when technology has far surpassed what it is now. The sci-fi world in which most of the story took place looked fantastic and the action sequences were done superbly. It’s just a shame that there was nothing behind the visuals to actually make any of it matter or make sense.

Watch it if you like giving your eyes a treat, but switch off the brain, because you don’t even want to try to follow the plot.

And there you have it, not as entertaining a flight as last time, but not half bad.

6 mini-reviews from a long-haul flight

So as you can imagine this last week or so has been rather busy what with moving to the other side of the world and all! As such I’ve not really got a lot of blog about. However, what with spending all of about 2 days travelling, I’ve spent rather a long time on long-haul flights in the last week. With long-haul flights comes a chance to catch up on some films that I didn’t get the opportunity to watch when they were in the cinema. These films are no longer in cinemas and there are quite a few of them, so I’ll keep each of these reviews short.

Fantastic Mr Fox

I love Fantastic Mr Fox, the original Roald Dahl story that is. I had it as an audio book when I was younger and listened to it to death. Given the strength of the source material I had high hopes for this film. Inevitably I was disappointed. The problem with the Fantastic Mr Fox is that it is a short story, a very short story in fact, the sort of short story that would only take half an hour or so to tell through the medium of film. This is of course a massive problem when films are expected to last well over an hour. To get over this problem the story was embellished somewhat – Mr Fox was given a family and a much more complex back story and a significant chunk of plot was added to the end.

Up until the end of the original plot I was happy to go along with the additions – the extra bits were charming and complemented the source material. Indeed it served to further develop and examine the character at the heart of the story. However the half an hour or so of material that came after conclusion of the original story turned me against the film – whoever wrote the extra bit was nothing like as good a story teller as Dahl and it showed. Roald Dahl’s stories have always relied on being just absurd enough to be enjoyable without going so far as just to be plain silly. Unfortunately the added bit failed miserably to treat this line and so the story really fell apart. It became increasingly hard go alone with the plot as the character’s motivations stopped being convincing and dialogue got increasingly poor.

If you love Fantastic Mr Fox like I do then this is an excellent adaptation of the story with a very charming style and a decent amount of respect for the source material, but switch it off where the story originally ended and pretend the last half an hour or so of the film didn’t exist.

Law-Abiding Citizen

I went into this film expecting very little. From what I could gather it was a run of the mill revenge flick – short on motivation and characterisation and relying too heavily on big explosions. I was very surprised when I was actually genuinely interested in the plot and characters. I was able to go along with what was, on reflection, a rather farfetched plot which bordered on the absurd because the characters were so strong that I wanted to know what happened to them. The film’s great advantage was that it was very well written (unlike many revenge films), so the pacing was such that the lead characters had time to develop. The viewer was able to get to grips with their motivations and their weaknesses. We understood why the killer did what he was doing and could even sympathise with him, but we still understood that what he was doing was wrong. Similarly we could see the flaw in the main protagonist and how that led to the tragedy that befell him, but this didn’t cause us to resent him because we understood his motivations and even sympathised with them.

Looking back however the plot was slightly too absurd to quite stand up to deeper analysis. The problem was that the major twist was somewhat too farfetched for anyone to guess it. A good twist will be one which comes as a surprise because it is so simple and obvious and yet no-one cottoned onto it. For the viewer it has to have been foreshadowed well enough that he could potentially have guessed it before it is revealed. Unfortunately for Law-Abiding Citizen, the twist was not well foreshadowed so it seemed to come out of nowhere. This meant that the entire plot after the twist fell a little flat. The build up was fantastic, but the end was not all that satisfactory.

I would recommend that you see this film. For a revenge flick it is very well written and much deeper than most. It ends poorly, but it’s still a really good film and well worth seeing. Probably one you should rent rather than buy.

Alice in Wonderland

To my great shame I have to admit that I’ve never actually read Alice in Wonderland. Given that it was one of the ground-breakers in the fantasy genre – a genre of which I am a huge fan – I really should have read it by now. Having seen this film I am resolved to go and read it as soon as possible. The film really is a must see; brilliantly dark, very witty, wonderfully acted and superbly written. Sure the source material is very strong, but Tim Burton works wonders with it. There is no better example of the wonderful aesthetic than the climax, which felt like being hurled head first through a Baroque painting. In it, the shining armour-clad heroin battles a lightening bolt breathing dragon around Neoclassical ruins while white chess pieces do battle with animated heats-suited playing cards on a giant chess board below. Add to this, non-corporeal felines, insane hat-makers, fencing dormice and a love-heart themed palace and you have a truly brilliant film. I’m not sure how much of this is down to the strength of the source material, but even if it is, Burton has adapted it to film brilliantly.

I do, inevitably, have a few criticisms; at times the film felt just a little bit rushed. Some of the minor human characters were not characterised all that well and the ‘good’ side was not really established properly. Indeed there seemed no real reason why the side with the chess pieces should win beyond the fact that the other side were all quite clearly insane. Alice only seems to side with them because she quite likes the hatter, rather than that she sees any real reason to like the queen or support her cause. This might be intentional of course, but it is left too ambiguous to be sure. The film almost seems a little undecided itself – I was left wondering whether we were supposed to like the white guys or not.

Despite a few issues, this is probably one of the best film I’m reviewing today. It really is a must see.

Sherlock Holmes

I love a good murder mystery, so it’s a shame this film is not one. For a film based on one of the most brilliant detectives in the history of fiction, there really is very little detecting done in this film. There’s never really an issue over ‘who dun it’ because it is never in doubt. If you go into this film expecting a murder mystery you will be sorely disappointed. However if you go into this film expecting a clever, well written action film you certainly will not be disappointed. The character of Sherlock Holmes is pretty similar to the original, which is great because he is an absolutely wonderful character. Indeed the film’s real strong point is its characters, which is really unusual for an action film and really good to see. Another good thing is the fairly low key nature of the action. There are no explosions or high octane car chases, no raging gun battles or increasingly unlikely stunts. It’s all hand to hand fights with the occasional pistol in varying locations across 19th century London. This lack of pulse-raging actions leaves room for the important things, like story and characters, both of which are very strong.

As you’ve probably noticed I’ve been tending to put things I didn’t like in this second paragraph, but for Sherlock Holmes I really can’t think of anything. For what it is, it’s really good. What it is, is a plot and character driven action film with a hint of the supernatural (or supposed supernatural anyway). Don’t expect clever twists and turns or hunts for elusive killers, do expect good pacing, superb writing, well thought out characters who actually develop, an interesting plot and a sequel because it was clearly written with another one in mind. Another must-see.

Astro-Boy

Are you a fan of charming, well-told morality tales set in witty and all-too-shiny dystopian future sky cities? If so then Astro-boy is the film for you. In fact even if you’re not a fan of the above you should still watch Astro-boy because it’s good fun. Yet another adaptation (from a Manga of all things), Astro-boy has a strong story and setting with some interesting characters. It’s well written and witty, but the main thing that sets it apart is the film’s message. The film subtly deals with the issues of what it is to be human by having a robot become so advanced that he becomes essentially no different from any human – he has the same motivations, the same emotions, the same responses to stimuli, the difference is that he can fly and has machine guns in his butt. The film is also about the seductive nature of power and the dangers of playing with forces beyond one’s control. The great thing is that none of these issues are ever actually explained or examined explicitly in the film. There is an old writing mantra that goes ‘show, don’t tell’; Astro-boy does this perfectly. All the issues are raised implicitly; we are shown the issue and pushed gently towards the conclusion the films wants us to draw, without ever being told about it. That is basically the definition of a well told story.

However Atro-boy does suffer from being Japanese in origin. I know that sounds like a terrible thing to say, but hear me out. Anyone who has ever played a JRPG knows what I mean here. The film is far too unambiguous and idyllic; the good guys are all virtuous, peace-loving flower-children, whereas the bad guys are all unquestioningly evil, selfish madmen. Sure the good guys make mistakes, but they all realise them immediately and try to rectify them, whereas the bad guys fail entirely to see the evil of their ways even when they’re staring them in the face. The conclusion is that everyone lives happily ever after in perfect harmony. Essentially this lack of ambiguity gets a little hard to swallow by the end.

Despite this Astro-boy is well worth watching. It really is a charming little film with many more good points than bad.

Invictus

It’s tempting just to write that this film has got Morgan Freeman in it so you should watch it just for his brilliant performance as Nelson Mandela and finish there, but I like to think that I’m more professional than that. If you’re a rugby fan then you have to take this film with a pinch of salt, because the rugby really is pretty poor, but the film is not really about the rugby, it’s about the events surrounding it and for that it’s a must-watch. It’s a really great feel good film about the people of South Africa trying to adapt to a post-apartheid world. Both blacks and whites are at fault and both blacks and whites reconcile each other by the end. A heart warming true story which is really, really well told, even if the accents are a little sketchy here and there. As you can probably tell I’m rushing through this last one because this post is long enough already so I’ll simply end by telling you to watch this film along with all of the others on this list (if not all of them to their conclusion). Overall it was a rather enjoyable plane journey.

It's political correctness gone mad

I don’t watch Strictly Come Dancing because I have better things to do, like gouge my eyes out with shards of glass. If I did watch Strictly Come Dancing I would probably have been filled with indignation at the recent ‘racist’ comments uttered by Anton Du Beke, who said his dancing partner looked like a ‘paki’ after she had had some spray tan put on. Instead I am filled with scorn for the media explosion that this throw-away comment has caused.

Du Beke has of course apologised unreservedly and said that his comments were not intended to be offensive. His partner, Laila Rouass has accepted the apology. So now we can move on, yes? No? Apparently we now have to have a debate about what is appropriate to say on TV and whether we should use words which could potentially be offensive so some people.

Of course this is not one issue but two; what is appropriate for television and what language it is appropriate for us to use in our day to day lives. Let me put my cards on the table and say that I don’t think Du Beke’s comments were appropriate. He is a figure in the public eye, watched by millions countrywide. He should not be using sensitive language like ‘paki’. While he made the comment in jest, it is a word which has many unpleasant connotations. In the public eye a comments which is supposed to be interpreted as a joke made between two friends are taken out of context. When the camera start rolling nothing you say or do is private, which is what makes reality TV such terrible viewing.

This is not to say that offensive words should not be used on TV; most comedy shows would lose all their material for a start. But Strictly Come Dancing and other show like it are meant to be light, family entertainment, they are not meant to be scandalous or racy. Bruce Forsyth, the presenter of the show, defended Du Beke’s comments, saying that people should have a ‘sense of humour’ about these things. The problem is that Du Beke’s comments weren’t even funny; it’s the kind of crass, immature comment I would expect from a 5 year old.

Which doesn’t lead me on at all well to the second and most interesting issue; what language is appropriate in our personal lives? In a multicultural world in which awareness of different social, racial and national groups is greater than at any point in history surely we should watch what we say? Well that goes without saying, but that does not mean that we should remove words like ‘paki’ from our lives. What we have to be careful of is context and intent.

Of course comments specifically intended to be offensive to a certain racial or social group, or indeed any individual, are inappropriate and never justified. Similarly a throw away comment which may not be intended to be offensive, but is taken to be offensive is inappropriate and we must be careful of what we say. There is such thing however as offensisensitivity (actually that word is made up). Some comments are not supposed to be taken to be offensive and people who interpret throwaway comments made in jest as racism need to get their heads out of their backsides. I think what Forsyth means when he said ‘we need to have a sense of humour’ is that we need to stop getting offended at comments which are not supposed to be offensive and are not even potentially offensive to us. While he may have been wrong regarding the Du Beke issue, he is right that people need to stop being offended on behalf of other people. I doubt very much that many Pakistanis were all that offended by Du Beke’s comments, and yet a several hundred people complained about it. I would bet that most of these people were not from Pakistan.

Essentially what I’m trying to say is that we need to understand that most of the time, people get offended in contexts where comments were meant as jokes. The thing is, when we joke about racism, we are acknowledging that it is wrong and indeed that it is ridiculous. By trivialising racism it is made to look even more ridiculous and hence be discredited. Now I very much doubt Du Beke had this in mind, but that’s not the point. The point is that when people get indignant about throw away comments, it puts them closer to a par with actual racism, doing nothing to solve the problem, simply muddying the water.

Back to Earth

Unless you didn’t notice last weekend was Easter weekend; an opportunity for us all to celebrate the fact that Jesus is dead. I think there’s some more too it that that, I’m not entirely clear on the detail. Given that it was Easter I was expecting the usual dirge of terrible festive TV shows to erupt from my television like raw sewage from a rusty pipe, which was why I was both surprised and somewhat worried when I found out that the BBC has decided to make a three part Red Dwarf Special. For those that don’t know Red Dwarf is a cult comedy show from the 80’s and 90’s which sadly stopped being aired after its 8th series in 1998. It’s really funny and if you haven’t seen any of it yet then I pity you for it, go watch some now. Go on it’ll probably be on Dave, or the internet.

Anyway, I was a little worried that they decided to remake the show because frankly this sort of thing almost never works. Returning to a franchise after is has died a death in order to milk a bit more cash from its withered and useless udders is almost doomed to failure from the start. Not only are they beating a dead horse, they’re digging up the rotting corpse of a long dead horse and beating that. Perhaps the recession has caused the bank of good ideas for comedy shows to go bust.

While I wasn’t expecting much there was a glimmer of hope poking its head above the sludgy sea of cynicism. Maybe, just maybe Doug Naylor would be able to resurrect his brainchild and give the fans of the series another taste of his genius. It has to be noted that Naylor is only half responsible for Red Dwarf; Rob Grant is the other half of the original team, however the Naylor and Grant went their separate ways after series six and the subsequent series were no where near as good as the first ones. I was certainly not hoping for a repeat of the shows original brilliance, but if it could replicate the fun of series seven and eight I would be happy.

While it didn’t quite reach such daunting heights, it was a lot better than I was expecting. It had a fair few good gags and the interplay between the characters was still there despite the 10 year layoff. Inevitably there where some short comings however; firstly it relied far too heavily of self-reference. The very concept made that inevitable I suppose but it feels like poor writing when one has to consistently put a wrecking ball through the fourth wall to get any laughs. While Romantic Irony is generally an underused medium it is best is small doses; too much of it just feels like a copout excuse not to have to make any real jokes.

Another major quibble I had was the fact that it just didn’t feel like an episode of Red Dwarf; their was no laughter track, almost all the sets were CG and the fact that it took place on earth rather than is deep space billions of light years from anywhere made it feel wrong. Ok so the characters were the same and they had the same brilliant chemistry, but it felt like some goofy side project, rather than a continuation of the franchise.

Ever since Rob Grant left there has, inevitably, been a chance of direction to the show. I have no problem with the writers trying to take the show to new places, but it felt like too much a step away from what made the show brilliant; a human, a hologram, a robot and a highly evolved cat alone in deep space with nothing but a senile computer to keep them company. The show really worked like that and the comic styles of the writers was ideally suited to it. Granted they occasionally worked their way into different situations, but this special was a step too far into uncharted territory for the show. Some of the magic was lost on the way into the dark cesspit of the unknown.

The ending bugged me a little; it seemed like they just pulled an old story idea out of a hat, changed a few of the specifics, added a few story elements from other past shows and redressed it to look like originality. Talking lots of old things and gluing them together in a way that has not been done before is not originality. People think that Harry Potter is original, it isn’t. Not one of the ideas is new, it’s just tired old clichés put together in a new way. The storyline for ‘Back to Earth’ (the title for the special if you didn’t know) was not original. It worries me somewhat that Doug Naylor cannot think of one original idea after having 10 years off from the show. Maybe he was trying to induce nostalgia over past brilliance to excuse his lack of an original idea or many good jokes to go with it. In any case he failed.

It wasn’t all bad however. Red Dwarf has always been good at taking snippets from other films and smuggling them into the show. Ok so it’s not original, but the way they do it is fantastic. 2001 A Space Odyssey is a massive inspiration for the show; many of the monsters encountered in the show are inspired by Alien and there is even a sci-fi reimagining of Casablanca knocking around the archive somewhere. The film inspiration for this special was Blade Runner, right down to characters asking their makers for more life and big pyramid shaped building in the middle of London. While perhaps a little thick, the reference felt like good clean red dwarf and fills me with hope that the show may well be reborn. There were hints dropped like bricks off a bridge about a ninth and even a tenth series, so here’s hoping that the crew get back on Red Dwarf and give us another few series of deep space hilarity. You never know, they may even be able to tempt Rob Grant back, pigs may well fly and hell will probably freeze over.