DVD
Red Dwarf
Series two

Starring: Chris Barrie, Craig Charles, Danny John-Jules & Norman Lovett
BBC Worldwide Publishing

RRP: £19.99

BBCDVD1118
Certificate: 12
Available now


Three million years from Earth, the mining ship Red Dwarf. It's crew: Dave Lister, the last human being alive; Arnold Rimmer, a hologram of his dead bunkmate; and a creature who evolved from the ship's cat...

The second series of Red Dwarf is a vast improvement over the hit and miss episodes in series one. This is the first time we are introduced to Kryten, who went on to become a regular crew member in series three. In the episode Kryten, the malfunctioning robot is played by David Ross - who is much better in the role than Robert Llewellyn ever was. This episode also introduces a soap opera called Androids which was a joke that was reused by Futurama for its spoof TV series, designed to cater for robots, All my Androids.

One of the funniest episodes in season two is Queeg, in which Red Dwarf's back up computer (Charles Augins) takes over Holly's role as ship navigator as Holly is too senile to continue running the ship. The other four episodes: Better Than Life, Thanks for the Memory, Stasis Leak and Parallel Universe, represent some of the best episodes that Red Dwarf ever produced. It all gets a little annoying once Kryten becomes a full-time member of the crew. Whether that would have been the same if David Ross had been free to continue the role is questionable.

This series also sees the last appearance of Clare (or C. P. as she now likes to be called) Grogan as the object of Lister's desires. It was also after this series that Normal Lovett decided to jump ship to start his own short lived show.

This extras on disc two sound pretty impressive until you actually get around to viewing them. The outtakes and deleted scenes are nothing to write home about, the Tongue Tied video is about 20 seconds longer than the version you see on the finished episode and the Talking Book chapters are there simply to sell more Red Dwarf material.

Having said that, £20 for a 2-disc set is great value for money. It's certainly worth it just for the quality of the episodes.

Darren Rea


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