Be careful what you wish for.

I've been out of the loop for a while and I'd given up on seeing a Red Dwarf reboot/reunion show, so when I tuned in for the latest Doctor Who special (which I'll talk about elsewhere) I was pleasantly surprised to find a very special Easter Egg following up "Planet of the Dead". I went back and watched the first two episodes.

Some things should be left alone.

I really enjoyed Red Dwarf when it ran on my local PBS station.  Every Saturday night, as Saturday Night Live ran out of its good material, I could switch over to WITF and pick up on new-to-me episodes of Rimmer and Lister, Cat and Kryten satirizing science fiction concepts and doing a damn fine job with the proto-CGI and rubber monster effects.  As the show wore on and the gimmick of being the last humans in the universe wore out, the show reinvente itself into something fresh with every series.  At its worst, it was a 22 minute set up toa funny punchline.  At its best, it was inventive television.

When the show went off the air, I didn't petition or grieve very hard because Red Dwarf was always one step away from losing that delicate balance between satire and self-parody.  Cast changes and re-attempted themes brought it closer and closer to "jumping the shark" but it ended before it got to the ramp.

Red Dwarf 2009 is just not funny.  It's like watching your favorite rock band take the stage after ten years realizing they haven't really practiced much - at least not together - in the interval. After 2 episodes, I feel like I'm reading a lucky fan's winning entry in the "Write a Red Dwarf Reunion" contest.  So far the story has about three misses for every joke it nails.  Overall, once the novelty of seeing everyone in costume wears off, there's nothing left to capture my interest.

Rimmer is still Rimmer, but for a hologram he looks much older and has lost a lot of that youthfully arrogant asshattery that made him a great character.  In its place is an older, softer (in many ways) shlub who has to "turn on" his old character when the script calls for it.

The rest of the original cast slides back into costume without much effort.  After all, it was rare that these characters stretched beyond their caracature.  Unfortunately, the material is awful and I'm not laughing.  The pauses where a laugh track might have been have become awkward silences, like they are asking themselves if the material is funny.

Don't get me wrong, I really WANTED to like the first two episodes.  Despite a glimmer of that old fun, it really is a different show.  The device introduced in Episode 2, the metafiction aspect, is so tired that it just brings the action to a halt.

I will keep an eye on three in the hope it all pulls together.