Dave is the perfect new home for Red Dwarf, as the 'Men and Motors' channel has a solid history of broadcasting old BBC shows with aging males going through the same old routines. Red Dwarf is the Top Gear of sci-fi: full of middle aged men trying to recreate their youth and amusing themselves far more than their audience.

To be fair, the first episode of this new series, Trojan, was better than the abysmal Back to Earth trilogy that Dave attempted a while back. It was watchable in an undemanding way and had a couple of semi-decent moments, mostly involving an obscure fact about a moose. The main problems are the same as the last few series: the fact that the cast are visibly far too old for to be playing these never changing adolescent characters and that the scripts are so pedestrian. Red Dwarf started as a quirky sitcom about an odd couple in space but is now a cheap tribute act to itself. There was nothing inventive or original in Trojan, which consisted of a series of lazy gags and a spoof of Star Trek: hardly cutting edge, is it?


The cast know each other very well and their easy chemistry makes all this just about bearable but the joke is wearing to breaking point. By spoofing Trek, and wearing the classic space pyjamas, they inadvertantly remind us of how the old Star Trek outstayed their welcome. For fans who are content to watch past glories revisited and watered down, this might just cut it and perhaps Series 10 can still surprise it. This first episode, however, was the very definition of mediocre.

GK Rating: **