Too Hot For TV
A podcast dedicated to the expanded universe of your favourite franchises.
Too Hot For TV
S01 E04 - Samir Rachid's Kidney
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In this episode Dylan is joined by Mark Harrison to look at the expanded universe of Coronation Street. First they tackle the straight to video film 'Coronation Street: Viva Las Vegas!' written by Russell T Davies and then they look at Red Dwarfs visit to the cobbled street with 'Red Dwarf: Back to Earth'.
Welcome back to Too Hot for TV. We are the podcast that looks at all things expanded universe. Today, I'm joined by writer and quizmaster Mark Harrison. Mark, welcome to the show.
SPEAKER_05Hiya, thank you for having me. Excited to talk about everything but Coronation Street the TV show.
SPEAKER_04Well, exactly. That's the format, right? That's the format. Mm-hmm. So yeah, as you mentioned, we are talking about Coronation Street today. The regular listeners who are here for the sci-fi of it all may be a little bit like, why are they covering this? But there are, I mean, with the first thing we're doing, there's there's very much a link there. And with the second thing we're doing, it is out and out sci-fi. Coronation Street, or as it's sometimes known, Corrie or Corra, first aired in the United Kingdom on ITV on the 9th of December 1960. The programme centres on a cobbled terrace street in the fictional town of Weatherfield in Greater Manchester. The show celebrated its 60th anniversary back in 2020 and has broadcast over 11,000 episodes. So, are you a Coronation Street fan?
SPEAKER_05I've I've said this before about, you know, because we've we're both fans of Doctor Who, but I've said this before about Coronation Street as well. It's one of those things that as you come into it, you're kind of introduced to it by your parents. And I think with Coronation Street as well, it's just more of a passive thing. It's it's it's Telly is the heart of the home, isn't it? It's uh it's the new fireplace. It's just always there. And it's fair to say that like since moving away from home, I've kept more of a foot in it than I usually care to admit. I have like a decent working knowledge uh as we go, and I have opinions about where it is now, like too many people do. Too many people with social media accounts. But yeah, it's it's just one of those things of a working general knowledge. It's just been omnipresent in British CV culture, hasn't it?
SPEAKER_04Yeah, absolutely. As you say, it's sort of the backbone of the home in a way. And I remember as a child really resenting it and disliking it. It's like, why are we watching this boring stuff? And then perhaps later in childhood getting a bit more into it, but not really wanting to admit. And this is across all soaps. Coronation Street was on, Emmerdale was on, East Enders was on, Brookside was on when that was on. And you you kind of get drawn in, and then in my teenage years, it was very much like in my early 20s, like, no, soaps are for idiots. And as I've got older, you you you kind of learn to appreciate them. And while I don't watch any of them regularly, I will jump in and there will be like I'm watching East Enders for a few weeks, or Coronation Street for a few weeks, and there's something quite uh quite nice of just jumping in and out of them, but I couldn't say you've got a huge working knowledge of it because it's just, as you say, it's always there, and sometimes I will watch and sometimes I won't, but I have fond memories of certain eras more than others.
SPEAKER_05Yeah. Like in the interest of full disclosure, it is worth mentioning that um since becoming a dad last year, and maybe a little bit before becoming a dad last year, I have ended up watching a lot of classic curry on IT V3 because they do this on the afternoons, then repeat the same episodes the next mornings. As the early mornings when I'm up with a baby, I tend to watch it because let me tell you this, at the time of recording, channel four is in the middle of the last season of Frasier for the third time since my daughter was born. There's only so many times I can like have Fraser. I'm quite like an active viewer. So generally, when I'm up in those early mornings and what's going on in the background, I'll just end with sticking IT V3 on it. It's just in the middle of what they're now calling classic quarries, like, oh Jesus, I was old enough to remember this. I was in the room when this was first started. I was like doing something else while this was on. So I've ended up seeing a fair amount of um of stuff from 20 years ago, and it's just again at the time recording approaching the point where Vera and Jack Duckworth are in their last years in the show. I think probably by the time this goes out, they'll have heard the one where Liz Dawn goes out with it, where Vera dies, and then it's a couple of years later that Jack goes out with it. And it's wild that I remember that without having a look at it's it's sort of like, alright, I know where we are. So it's considering I'm quite an active viewer of films to tell you this stuff, just because I'm hard hearing as well. So I watch stuff with subtitles on, I always like to pay attention to what I'm watching properly. It's wild how much I absorbed of that passively back in that day.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, absolutely. I haven't seen the characters and the thing we're going to discuss today for 20 odd years, but I knew them all like straight away. I knew their names, I could remember roughly their some of their backstories, things like that. It's like it's buried deep in the British consciousness, whatever error you grew up with is just embedded there.
SPEAKER_05So think of people could protest, they never watch it. Oh, I don't know anything about it. Who's this? Steve MacDonald, correct?
SPEAKER_04Absolutely. So the first thing we're going to cover is Coronation Street of Viva Las Vegas, which was a straight-to-video film or extended episode, I guess you'd say, released on the 17th of November 1997, written by Russell T. Davis, based on a story by Adele Rose, directed by Brian Mills, and produced by Paul Marques. It was eventually shown on television, but not until Sunday, the 2nd of July, the year 2000, in an edited 75-minute format with adverts. So we've got a full director's cut here.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, have you watched the edited down version though as well?
SPEAKER_04No, I haven't, no.
SPEAKER_05Oh, I did, especially for this. Yeah, it's been colourised, it's got a new CGI. And for some reason, whenever the villain appears, the Masters scene tune starts playing. So so I guess this is where that started.
SPEAKER_04Well, I'll I'll be sure to check that out afterwards, but I imagine there'll be a BFI screening and like a box at some point. So I'll I'll probably wait till then. So let's have a little look at what the British television landscape looked like at the time before we uh jump into the release itself. John Fashion You co-hosts this final edition of Gladiators Brasseye debuts, C Fact ceases to provide information on Channel 4's transmissions, the final episode of Play Days was broadcast, Xena Princess Warrior makes its UK debut, and Princess Diana passes away, causing UK gold to replace its planned Sunday morning repeat of the Armageddon Factor, which contains the death of a princess, sort of, with Planet of the Spiders, a story which opens with a car crash. And uh BBC One airs its infamous Clive Anderson interview with the Bee Gees, where he constantly takes the piss out of them, calls them tossers, and they all storm out. What a time to be alive.
SPEAKER_05And into this maelstrom of British cultural activity comes Coronation Street's fever, Las Vegas.
SPEAKER_04Exactly. Jack and Vera Duckworth fly from Coronation Street to Las Vegas to renew their wedding vows for their 40th anniversary. While there, Jack reveals he lied about his age when they met and when they were wed, invalidating their marriage, so he proposes to her again. She accepts, but they fall out when she prevents him from winning a million dollar jackpot on a slot machine. Weatherfield hairdressers Fiona and Maxine are also on holiday in Vegas, taken in lieu of payment for hours worked from their boss. At a party thrown by business mogul Stefano Delaney, the pair unwittingly assault an undercover police officer called Dino and are taken to jail. When they are released, the pair argue and Maxine goes back to Stefano's hotel suites the next night, while Fiona agrees to a drink with Dino. At the same hotel, millionaire women's underwear designer Maxwell Baxter and his greedy fiancé Biddy split up when she reveals her previous five rich husbands died in suspicious circumstances. Believing Jack to be a millionaire, Biddy attempts to seduce him, but relents when Vera persuades Maxwell to win her back. Jack escapes Biddy's room, hidden in a hotel trolley that goes up to Stefano's suite. Dino warns Fiona that the police are planning to arrest Stefano for numerous crimes, including his latest industrial espionage scam on Maxwell. Maxine accidentally captures video evidence of this, and while she and Fiona are held at gunpoint by Stefano, she sneaks the tape to a hidden Jack. Stefano kidnaps Maxine and makes a break for the airport, with Fiona, Vera, Maxwell, Biddy, and Dino in pursuit. Jack arrives at the service door with the tape in time for the police to arrest Stefano and his associates. Vera and Jack reconcile and marry in the little wedding chapel before encountering Joan Collins on their first class flight home, while Maxwell meets an unfortunate end like Biddy's previous husband.
SPEAKER_00What is this?
SPEAKER_05Well, Dylan, you say it's a film or an extended episode or something. We are gonna call it a film. It's 90 minutes long. We watched the whole thing. If Twin Peaks the Return counts as a film, this is a film. It's sort of the second one of these that they did, like reading around. They did one of these VHS, like straight to VHS specials before, about a cruise with various characters like Rita and Emily Oll going on a cruise. And then that was on TV shortly after coming out on video, and this was apparently a big controversy. Which is why the cover of Viva Las Vegas on VHS has a not to be shown on TV until very weirdly, specifically the year 2000. And they held up they held up that end of the bargain. So you know it it is very plainly, you know, uh it's a stocking fella, you know, really. It's for it's like something by your grandparents or your your parents who are into Coronation Street, really. It's it's just seems to have been commissioned as that, and you're into it. It's that wild thing of like, right, well, what happens when you turn TV shows into films? They go abroad. So we're we're gonna we're gonna city of death this shit. We're gonna film some exteriors outside with the cast for maybe a couple of days, maybe like one interior in a hotel or casino or something. And then if you told me the rest of this was filmed in Manchester, I would not be shocked.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, there is a weird thing where there's a point where they're outside in Vegas and you're like, oh, is that actually Lanzarote? The weather looks crap. But no, they're in Vegas. They just happened to arrive as a storm, a monsoon was blowing in. So a little unlucky on that front. But I'm imagining some of the interiors were shot in the UK. There's certainly a scene in a restaurant where some of the extras sound very northern.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, that's that's right. That's that, and the fact it looks like when James Bond's driving out the windows, like at the 60s so it's just that lovely rear-projected skyline of Vegas. So this is this, like Jack and Beer, who have already mentioned, you know, were institutions in British tele, you're not just in Coronation Street, really, and takes them out to Vegas for a plot that, you know, at some point in the show they will have set off to Vegas. And then at the end of this film, the characters who are there all say we'll never talk, we'll never speak of this again, just so it's not going to impact in any way. Not so none of Russell the Davies' nonsense is going to impact anything on my storylines when they get back. Because it's Jack and Vera, and then also Fiona and Maxine. Fiona played by Angela Griffin, Maxine by Tracy Shaw. Um, there's a bit early on in this where Vera is reminiscent about characters she knows, and you look at all of these characters, like she's sort of reminiscent about people she knows and goes dead now, which is something that I have to take into. It's wild that it came up in this, which I've never seen until yesterday, when it's something I've been saying about classic Cory on ITV3. Oh, there's a character, I've just been telling my bit my daughter, Salman. Oh, look at her, she she runs the salon dead now. But yeah, all of these characters, I think, except Fiona, have died in the show. Like uh one got murdered, the other two died peacefully, and Dangela Griffin moved over to Waterloo Road, which I think is somewhere, I'm not sure how to get there from Coronation Street or Sesame Street, but yeah, so it's it's this thing where they're all on holiday for reasons, like they don't go together, they're not on, you'd think they'd maybe be on the same flight, so they might bump into each other on the way to the airport. They meet on a casino floor, and it's like, oh hi, shall we should we all go have our own adventures then? Oh yeah, I'll see you later. We'll have our adventures, you have yourself, okay then. So this happens. But the the thrust of it is the the it sort of splits off into two, and they sort of non-committally start with Fiona and Maxine having a Thelma and Louise thing. Yeah. Which is, you know, not the biggest liberty taking over a Ridley Scott movie that we'll talk about in this particular episode, but it is in this film. You know, so Fiona and Maxine go off and do their thing, but the main thrust of it is Jack and Vera in this screwball comedy, like very much in the style of Mr. and Mrs. Smith, the Hitchcock one, not the Branch of Leader one, where a couple discover that because reasons their malit their marriage was never valid. And this is as they're celebrating their 40th anniversary. You know, this there's this nice scene. Ver there's lots of very rusty Davies scenes of this. It's lots of couples talking and friends talking and that kind of thing. There's this nice scene where he just admits, casually admits, like, you know, Vera, you know, I said I was uh 22 when we first met. Well, I wasn't, and I've just been lying about here for 40 years. I just say, Oh, you've been lying about 40 years, we're not married. So that's the whole thing. I'm not gonna do impressions all the way through. I'm not gonna audio book this shit. You go, we had to watch this, you go and watch this. Um but yeah, the the thrust of it is that they realise that they're not married and they're in Vegas, they could get married, except they immediately have a massive falling out and they get stuck in this farcical, as I say, screwball romantic comedy type thing with um with other characters revolving around the hotel.
SPEAKER_04I mean, that's a very concise uh description of it. I can't say for certain that I've never seen this before, simply because it's exactly the sort of thing, as you sort of mentioned, that my nan would have owned. And I remember her owning things like this, but I can't say for certain. So maybe it certainly when I watched it didn't unlock any memories, but it's something I've definitely been aware of for a long time. And in fact, we talked about possibly doing this years ago. But I'm assuming this is your first time watching it.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, I found out about it. RT Day was on Instagram doing kind of like posts about every single show he's ever worked on. And this is where I found out he wrote this, and I think I mentioned it to you a little while after that. So there's like a big Instagram post reminiscent about he calls it, by the way, in his words, an atrocious script. So that's nice. So I've been saying, like, oh yeah, we should probably get round to this at some point. But every every time I mentioned someone, I'm I'm watching this and I'm doing this episode. They've said, Oh, my nana had that. Like I've seen that so many times because my nana had it on all the time. So yeah, I think it is fully that. It's it's it's a it's a nana film, but it's a film.
SPEAKER_04And it does as it feels like a film, like this is not your standard issue episode of Coronation Street. You mentioned screwball comedy there. This is much funnier than Coronation Street ever was, I think. Like it's a gag a minute. I mean, Coronation Street is funny, but there's a heart to it. But ultimately, we're watching a comedy film, would you say?
SPEAKER_05Yeah, definitely. It's it's got that in there, and the tone is up and down and all over the place, but yeah, it does feel like Jack and Deera in a throwback to those types of films, like not not so much Mr. and Mrs. Smith as things, like the very aptly titled We're Not Married, where five couples discover that their marriage is invalid and you know hijinks and she the other way in which because this isn't, you know, this isn't like a massive big budget production or anything where we say that it's a film, it's it's a feature-length thing. But you know, it was obviously made made for video and stuff. The other thing about this is the cast is wild, like for what it is, for a Coronation Street spin-off film. Like Mike McShane's in it of Whose Line Is Anyway of fame. Yeah. There's it naturally ends with a Joan Collins cameo that had hyped up a lot more, and it just popped up right at the end to the point where I forgot I was coming until that point. I mean, do you know which film, Dylan, which massive film from 2025 Rolf Saxon was in?
SPEAKER_04No, I don't.
SPEAKER_05Rolf Saxon who plays Stefano, the um the creepy, the Brett Ratner type in this.
SPEAKER_04But no, who who what films are you?
SPEAKER_05He's in Mission Impossible, the final reckoning, but prizing his role as William Dunlaw from the original Mission Impossible, which came out a year before this. So he's the guy who runs the black vault that Tom Cruise robs.
SPEAKER_03Wow.
SPEAKER_05And at the at the end of him messing up with Tom Cruise getting away with it, you know, Henry Cherney as his boss sends someone say that pack his bags, I want to move to Alaska tonight. And then one time gets moved to Alaska to be in the final reckoning, and the other he gets moved off to Vegas to be in a coronation street straight to do like Hollywood acting is wild. Acting is just odd. Lou Hirsch is in this as well, uh Baby Herman from Who Frame Roger Rabbit.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, it's an all-star cast. Presumably, Michael McShane was booked because he is in the UK for Whose Line Is It anyway, anyway, so he can work he can work in both places quite easily and is the is the cheap option.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, he's not in any of the X series that are convincingly in Las Vegas.
SPEAKER_04You say obviously it's not big budget, but they must have spent a lot more money than they normally would because they've gone over to Vegas where and like American crews and American filming and American unions are just much more expensive, and there's there's a little making of on YouTube that was obviously a bonus on the video. It's only 20 minutes, and it's not narrated or anything like that. But certainly when you see the American crew, I'm a bit like, okay, these people are getting paid some serious whack. So but then at the time, straight to video things made a lot of money in a way that now with things going to streaming and stuff, like that world doesn't really, really exist anymore. But it's like hopefully you make your money back on the high street. It also feels production-wise, because obviously we're multi-camera for most of Coronation Street, but whereas for this, we're it's as you say, it's shot like a film, presumably single camera. And so it feels elevated in in many ways. And I can imagine the audience, I can imagine my nan being quite wowed by it. So how do you feel about the production values of it?
SPEAKER_05Well, as I say, there are there are convincing Vegas exteriors and not less convincing Vegas exteriors. The the full extent of the film and Louise, but oh god, I texted you when this happened because it was fucking wild. The main exterior shot of like Theona Maxine driving around in a sports car on the Vegas strip kind of comes after a scene where there's this very like incessant plinky plunky synth incidental music over the scene of Jack and Beer in a restaurant that's definitely not in America. And then when it goes to this outside thing, weirdly it like ramps up in a what sounds like fire starter by the project.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, it's a rip-off.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, yeah. Oh, yeah, it's a yeah, it's for for for legal reasons completely distinct, but yeah, it's sounderlike version of that. That's just them driving around and nothing actually happened. So it's so it's uh so it is very much a thing of like, what would this look like if it was in Hollywood, you know, sort of it's it's the sort of thing that Davies goes on to like lampoon in uh Money Made Nolly, you know, there's all these international shoots like, oh yeah, we've got the budget to do this, or we get you on the QE too, and it's just kind of ridiculous that that they just turn up and just there's not really anything to do when they get there. Like it's that you could functionally have set this in Blackpool and had and had what they did, which is have the American and Canadian actors in it. Like I know Gwen Humble is married to Ian McShane, so probably based in the UK.
SPEAKER_04Right.
SPEAKER_05Production value-wise, it's it's it didn't wow me, but as you say, it's just a thing of it's a thing if you're moving off a cobbled street, and that's sort of there in the plot, isn't it? Is that when Vera and Jack meet uh Biddy and Maxwell, this you know, this millionaire Maxwell's the millionaire played by Mike McShane and uh Biddy uh Biddy is played by Gwen Humboldt. Uh Maxwell's full name, by the way, is Maxwell Baxter, so that we can end with a bit where an American woman delightfully kind of gets married at the end and delightedly goes, I'm Biddy Baxter. And that's the right is a mad man. Anyway, we knew this already. So when they meet this, you know, millionaire and his uh goaltig and fiance, they're kind of you know zhuzhing up the details of um what Coronation Street is. Oh, you know, it's a little cold assack. We own a bistro at the end of the road called the Rovers and all this kind of thing. And then delightfully, the opposite happens later on where they bring in a character randomly, they bring in the character cameos who hasn't been in it since 1978. And Vera does the one scene I've always wanted from Coronation Street is she sits down with someone, like whenever they bring a character back who hasn't been at it for ages, that it's all just sort of like, oh, what have you been up to since since you've been away? And they never say what's it been like for MD. Because what would happen is what happens here is Vera telling Ray Langton, oh right, so this happened and that happened. Oh, and uh then she ran off with him and she had a baby in the back room of the pub, and he's just like he's just rolling his eyes, he just thinks she's drunk and making it all up, and it drives me mad. Like, say how like you're like Bradley Walsh used to be in Coronation Street, and he went out with it around about 2008. If he came back in it out, I bet no one would mention that a tram exploded at the end of the street after he moved away, even though if that happened at the end of my street, it's all I would talk about. I don't know, it's been 15 years, it's all I would talk about. But you have this incredible scene that's like that's just that, it's like, oh anyway, so then she did that, and she's just this ridiculous spiel of stuff to tea tree's ex-husband.
SPEAKER_04Yeah. Does it feel like a a Russell T. Davis script?
SPEAKER_05I think so. Like I said, I think it's when you get the scenes where it's the restaurant table or it's a lot of scenes at at dinner tables, I would say, where these conversations are unfolded, whether it's the one early on or the one later on with them, the the cop who's straight with the the baby Herman cop who's straight and such a use Fiona, kind of has this, you know, monologue to himself about, you know, like, oh, if you're not tall or attractive, make them laugh, and that's all they do. Laugh, and it's just this tiny little character beat. But if we refer back to Russell O'Davies' Instagram post, the original script fell through. He was drafted in the right 90 minutes in three days. I did. So as fella goes, I don't mind that as fella like is that these are character modes. So these whether it serves story or not, these are portraits of characters. And then the rest of it is obviously as we say, Cory is the half of the home. The familiarity with Jack and with Vera and with Fiona and with Maxine is sort of him built there and he writes well for them. But it's an odd thing of it's an ambitious production, but I don't think I think it's like ambition has been thrust upon him here. It's like, can you write us 90 minutes of Coronation Street set in Las Vegas? And so and so the j I mean the jokes will fit. There's a fair amount of like cracker joke type stuff in there. Or you know, oh the stuff that, you know the stuff that uh Bill Tami as Jack Tokworb is well equipped to play, like the sort of um Erin Dorse type humor. It's it's it's the sort of thing where a character will say, I wouldn't be where I was today if it wasn't for my wife. I'd be at home with the kids, uh you know, sort of shit. Um it's a he comes kind of comes from that and from being a nightclub singer, and I've got to say, I'm stunned that he didn't sing in this. I've definitely seen episodes on IT V3 where they crawl bar in excuses for him to sing. Um that that never came up. But yeah, yeah, I think it comes naturally out of those characters, and then what comes unnaturally is sort of the very the pitch is the premise of the thing.
SPEAKER_04There's certainly bits of Russell I recognise here from be sort of uh supporting characters in queer as folk or Jackie Tyler or something like that, especially the gags. There's the one where go, oh, she died choking on a lamb chop, silver jubile jubilee, that such, or 40 years living in sin with a great lummox like you. And it's just like, okay, I could hear that coming out of any RTD character where he's really good at character, but they're all slightly heightened, so I think he it works in this screwball comedy way. And also sort of Russell's writing can be quite bleak, and at the end, after all these sort of jinx and japes of like Biddy that has been joking all the way through or saying that all her husbands, millionaire husbands, died in mysterious circumstances. And because they get back together, you think, oh no, this is going to be the relationship that that lasts, but no, at the end of it, she kills her husband, or it's heavily implied that she kills her husband.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, she it's yeah, she's just thrown away like a pair of wire cutters, having told him I go, all right, just go get the car money, it's over there, just by the edge, just by the fence, on the roof. It's it's one of those, you know, he slipped on an icy patch, he was decapitated. It was a very icy patch sort of lines, isn't it? Yeah, for certain bits of this, he's a madman for it. But whenever David Tennant or someone who's worked with him calls him TV's Shakespeare, that they're surely talking about this, you know, the farce of Biddy thinking that Jack Duckworth is a millionaire because they've been hyping up what Cory Coronation Street is and trying to seduce him for his money. And and then in the other room, Mike McShane playing up the you know, the sort of like traumatized virginal mummies boy who designs women's underwear, who's like an expert in women's underwear, but has never seen a boot that plays out across the I I almost said the drama there. It plays out across the far.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, it's a bizarre weaving of things, but for me it really works. And I think I'd probably watch Coronation Street more if it was all like this, but that's just my personal preference, you know. It's not something the show can do all the time or should do, I don't think. It's not what you want a soap opera to do. It's like but it's nice to jump into sort of 90 minutes and go, you're doing a comedy with action in sort of inverted quotes. More action than you'd get in a TV show, but that amounts to like a bit of running around, really. A sex scene, sort of, you know, with when uh Jack's locked in a cupboard and Biddy and Maxwell are finally are finally making love.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, it's bedroom fast action, but you know, in terms of like actual spectacle, someone falls into a swimming pool three times.
SPEAKER_04How do we feel that the Cory characters are treated in this? So we've obviously got our two leads, uh Vera and Jack Duckworth, and then we've got Fiona Middleton and Maxine Heavy. Do we feel that they're given enough to do? To be honest, like I could have done without the uh Fiona and Maxine stuff, if I'm honest with you. I think it was better just following the Duckworths, but I I appreciate that it's a soap you've got to weave in different storylines, I guess.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, I think that's just uh I think that's probably more of a thing of as much as this is to sell to nanas, they've probably gone, right? We need some of the young, the young happening characters to be in it as well. Did I just say happening? So I mean like Jesus Christ. That fatherhood is I'm a hundred years old now. Um, they do this, they do this like because being aware that this, you know, being aware that Beaver Las Vegas was a thing and never having watched it, I'm I know that they've done more of these, you know, you look at the DVD shows in Tesco and Azta, you know, these carried on all the way through the 2000s. I would believe you definitely if you told me this was the best one. I'm not, for this podcast or any other, gonna go look and see whether Ryan Haley Cropper in Romanian holiday was even better than this. Or if, you know, Scylla and Chesney going to Africa in out of Africa was better than this. Uh if you tell me this is the best one ever, I'll believe you and I can happily leave it at that. In terms of how the characters are treated, I think again, it's scenes that remind you of Russell T. Davies. It's when they're in that jail cell and it's about the power dynamics between the series, that Fiona is Maxine's boss, and while she's pissed off of her because she's slacking her off for like being boring and not wanting to go to the parties, and now they've got into trouble. She sort of like snaps that air and says, I gave you a job out of sympathy, and that kind of thing. It's not something that's going to be a lasting thing on the show. When they get back, it'll never come up again. They all get together at the end of their promise. Well, let's never speak of this again. So that's fine, but it's a sketch of drama between those two characters now they bounce off each other. So I think that's fine. I'm much more familiar with Jack and Vera in general. And in the absolutely impossible situation where you go, let's rate a film where Jack and Vera Duckworths go to America and we follow them on their bedroom fast hijinks through a Las Vegas hotel, and he almost wins a million dollars in a casino but misses out because his wife's nagging him about her earrings. Well, then yeah, it's a five-star script.
SPEAKER_04It is um I I mentioned before we started actually that I was expecting to watch this in chunks because I thought it would be shocking. But I watched it all in one go. It was an absolute riot, and I think it is Vera and Jack at the heart of it that that keep me engaged, and then the introduction of Maxwell and Biddy. How do you feel about Maxwell and Biddy's characters?
SPEAKER_05I mean, as you say, it comes to a very bleak end, doesn't it? But I do love the way that and even if it is you've got to film 90 minutes in three days, the way those characters swap around. Fiona and Maxine are kind of off doing their own thing, and then it just collides with the main plot in the end. What Biddy and Maxwell do is give foils to Jack and Vera. We get a lot of them together at the beginning, then when we have them apart and kind of going, when Vera's up saying, I'm a single woman, I can always I've always been single. It turns out I've never been married. Uh I've still uh Vera Burden, I've still had my maiden name. So she goes out and gets drunk with Biddy. Meanwhile, Jack goes out and gets drunk with Maxwell and ends up sharing a bed with them at the end of the night. Which, oh, by the way, shit, fucking hell. She ends up sharing a bed with Biddy as well and gets off it. So has that a line? Have you ever tried anything more sapphic? To which she goes, I'll drink anything.
SPEAKER_04But then it cuts away. So I'm a because they both laugh, but I'm not convinced that they didn't have sex.
SPEAKER_05They definitely had sex, Dylan. I mean, that that is inarguable. If you go on CoryWiki, which is as mad and as baffling and as wide-ranging as Tardis Wiki, CoriWiki will absolutely tell you that they it'll be under sex, it's like sex is an act between two adults that probably happened off-stream in Coronation Street Viva Las Vegas between Bidini Baxter and Vera Duckworth. It's it's speaking of Cory Wiki, by the way, it is as bonkers as Tardis Wiki is, but like for those very clinical sex, like, you know, in in this briefly, Vera mentions that um that Deidre Wynne got married to someone called Samiya, who is, you know, is said at this point in the show, um, donated his kidney to Tracy Barlow. Corey Wiki lists Samia Rashid's kidney as a current character in Coronation Street because Tracy Barlow still still has it, even though the character died in the 90s. Jesus. So this is the it's we're not alone, is what I'm trying to say. Or, you know, at the very least, it's catchy, whatever it is. The people who had it's hardest wiki has.
SPEAKER_04I think as I go through more and more of these spin-offs from other franchises, you inevitably learn more about the fandoms, and they're all as bad as each other. Some some worse than others, but you know, the the militant factions are there in all i in all of them.
SPEAKER_05I'm waiting for the Hertzog documentary about Cory Fandom after all this, but to go to the Biddy and Maxwell thing. They provide good foils because then they cross over again, you know, where it's the thing of there's never really any chance that Vera's gonna get with Maxwell.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_05But that's very much in that bedroom fast thing of thinking of Biddy manipulating both of them to try and get with Jack for what she thinks is his millions. So it's it's a gives the film some structure where it might not otherwise have had.
SPEAKER_04I really wanted Maxwell to survive, if only for another video where Maxwell and Biddy come to Coronation Street and Hilarity ensues, but it was it was never to be, unfortunately.
SPEAKER_05It's always the pitch for these, isn't it? And Hilarity and Shoes, whether it's Murray and Haley and Romania, and Hilarity and shoes.
SPEAKER_04Do you think anybody who's not a Coronation Street fan could jump into this and broadly get the feel of what's going on? Is it accessible?
SPEAKER_05God no. Um, but you know, like I said at the beginning. You can get people who protest that they don't know anything about it, but they know who Vera Duckware is, they know Jack Duckwave. If they're of a certain age anyway, like certainly I'm not talking about the younger people here. So if you're asking me, do I think like a Gen Z person can jump into Coronation Street Viva Las Vegas? I don't think the frame of reference is is there for like the 50s screwball type stuff.
SPEAKER_04I don't think Gen Z are listening to this podcast.
SPEAKER_05No, no, fair enough. All right, the rest of you score on have eye like like you, Dylan. I expected this to be really hard work. And once you finally got around to it and yeah, really enjoyed it. It was um I even coming with it with my baggage, I can appreciate that the things it does as a comedy script. And so much now, even in like in much bigger movies than this, in the kind of movies you'd think Rolf Saxon would be in after being in two Mission Impossible films. Even with like proper comedy films now, he always wants to be hybridized with something because the idea is that comedy doesn't travel well. Here we have something that's for the niche and narrow casts of audiences, you know, people who who uh as much as you know the nation's favourite soap is the nation's favourite soap. They weren't taking this a can, they weren't trying to sell this in international film markets. But you have this thing that, you know, looks outside of itself and looks back to all the you know touchstones and influences. So I think it's enjoyable on that way, yeah.
SPEAKER_04You mentioned Rolf Saxon there. I suppose the one element we haven't really talked about is his character and the the put the subplot of Stefano Delaney, whose life gets intertwined with Fiona and Maxine. How do we feel about I mean it's basically he's a gangster, he's a pawn baron, he's he's many things, he's a a copier of underwear, a bootleg underwear. He's ripping off ladies' knickers. How do we feel about his inclusion there and that plot?
SPEAKER_05Soap villains are as soap villains do, you know. It's it's it's it's certainly now the in the modern thing of Cory, and to a much lesser extent East Enders, you know, it's it's kind of wildly trying to be. You know that you know that famous phrase about American all Americans be temporarily embarrassed millionaires. I feel like the writers of soaps right now are temporarily embarrassed line of duty writers and creators, or you know, are temporarily embarrassed police officers, maybe, maybe they don't want to be a TV writing at all. But you have this mad collision of people who want to write crime dramas or who have caught from writing in fanfiction, which you see a fair amount of now, like a fair few TV writers who have, you know, been writing fanfiction online when they were kids. And so you end up with a lot of slash relationships and crime in Cory. It's the main thing at the minute. But you are with Cory, even though they've now, I think they've moved it some, I think it's on at half past eight now. I think the the soap hour on ITV now is eight o'clock. Wow. So Everdale and then Cory and H Stream. They did the big stupid crossover that we'll talk about in a little bit like a while ago as well. But you know, you're still left with the constraints of in a pre-watership thing. This is a show where murderous drug dealers will call people ding bats. You know, you're le you're left with, you know, no, I think you'd have a much stronger mouth than that, but everyone's flipping this and flipping that. So it's it's a question of whether there's always a case of with serial drama, you know, up to and including Doctor Who, that your reach will exceed the grasp. But it's really a question of when you have these limitations, are you really doing doing worthwhile drama with these not very threatening villains? Yeah, these you know murder these murderers in plain sights, you know. I think this is why people are end of the traitors. This is a thing that Cory's just been doing for ages, like serial killers who last for 18 months because it's just there's Pat he works down the built of yards and he's a maniac, but only but only on weekends.
SPEAKER_04You've got to wonder, like, was there ever a conversation to go, well, this is coming out on video, so it's unlikely to be purchased by kids. Do you make I'm not saying you go super dark, it's not that fucking Hollyoaks episode late at night with a sexual assault in. But do you go, do you know what? We can get away with some swearing and things like that. Because there are slightly more adult themes in terms of sex and murder and things like that in a farcical way. So I do wonder whether there was ever conversation we could just have somebody say like shit or wanker or something like that, but you know, ultimately. Ultimately, you don't need the regulars to say it, but your villain, just as you say, it's the equivalent of ace calling people bilge bag in Doctor Who. It's just like no kid speaks like that, no villain speaks like that. You know, I I guess they wanted to play it safe with this big budget production, you've got to get as many sales as you can.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, when it's essentially aimed at nanas as well. That's the other thing. You don't want to unwittingly buy um, you know, Rolf Saxon doing Coronation Street's first ever F-bomb for your nana.
SPEAKER_04Do we think that the home entertainment market is poorer for the not being things like this anymore, sort of straight to video spin-off releases?
SPEAKER_05I don't know because I wouldn't be I honestly wouldn't be too surprised if there's some ITVX exclusive thing ramps up just because ITVX is gonna ITVX, but like it's taking itself quite seriously at the minute, Cory is the thing. As you say, it's always been funny, but it's certainly not doing screwball comedy movies.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_05You know, about about these characters in go back and never talk about you know what happened, but because they're probably gonna get stabbed in the street the next week. Like my my my my theory about them taking themselves so seriously there being so much so uh everyone's getting interviewed by the police. And this is not an exaggeration, everyone is getting interviewed by the police in every single episode. My theory on this is that someone was meant to rent police cars and ambulances for a big stunt and accidentally bought them, and now all of ITV's soap out has to find ways to use this to get their money so I tell them recoup this. Although you work in the industry, you'll be able to tell me better than I know if if this is possible, but that's my theory.
SPEAKER_04Maybe it's like those old ITC shows where they were like, right, we've built this set, this set, and this set. Every show needs to use it, otherwise, you know, we won't get value for money.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, I mean, yeah, we're talking about this as if as if there isn't a show where an actor bought a £15,000 who mobile that then needs to be written into the show somehow. So yeah, I'll just shut it off my mouth for a minute.
SPEAKER_04Do you have much more you want to say on this story?
SPEAKER_05I'm glad I watched it. Um it's not something I would have necessarily sought out and haven't in all this time it's been out, but yeah, it's I just had a nice time with it.
SPEAKER_04I I would say anybody that's got a passing interest in this sort of thing, which let's face it is why they're listening to this podcast, it's very much worth dipping into. I as you say, I'm not sure I want to do all the Cory straight to video releases.
SPEAKER_05I will I will never watch another one of these.
SPEAKER_04Mark drawing a line on the sand here just in case I invite him back in a few weeks' time.
SPEAKER_05This far a no. What's next? A night's sale with Rosie Webster and a daff boyfriend? No, we're not doing it.
SPEAKER_04So then we must rate this. Is it a clanger, a banger, or an average meanbook?
SPEAKER_05Banger. I'm gonna say banger certainly compared to expectations. You know, it's you you you can, you know, the writer himself can call this an atrocious script, but the bar I think was higher even for director video spin-off movies than it is for Cory right now.
SPEAKER_04Uh yes, it's a banger from me too. I had a great time, a lot of fun, and it was ridiculous, but it was fun. I laughed out loud several times and not at it with it. Uh I mean I I did laugh at it as well, but you know.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, it's preposterous and uh has a lot of fun with it.
SPEAKER_04The next thing we're going to do, now broadly speaking, we're bending the rules slightly here because the whole purpose behind the podcast is we take something and look at it in a different format to its original format, but we're doing something very much that is a television show here, much like Coronation Street itself, but it's a bizarre crossover that perhaps no one thought would ever happen. No one maybe wanted it to happen. People have suggested since then it was a bad idea, who knows? We'll get into that. But what we're covering is Red Dwarf Back to Earth, which features a Coronation Street crossover. It was written by Doug Naylor, directed by Doug Naylor, produced by Helen Norman, and broadcast on the channel Dave, the 10th of April to the 12th of April 2009. A little look at the sci-fi landscape at the time. In cinemas, we had things like Avatar, District 9, Star Trek, Watchmen, Transformers, Revenge of the Fallen, Terminator Salvation, Moon and the Road. While on television we had V, The Vampire Diaries, and David Tennant begins his final bow as the 10th Doctor with Planet of the Dead. So we're very much in a time of we're not quite in the big nostalgia explosion that's going to happen a few years later. There's a lot of original properties out there, and then a few classics like Doctor Who, Star Trek, Terminator, getting another go.
SPEAKER_05Like at this point, they've only had one goal at starting another Terminator trilogy. And they've since had two more abortive Terminator trilogies. Just the way I like it.
SPEAKER_04Nine years on from the events of series eight, Dave Lister is once again the last human alive. After the deaths of Rimmer and Kachansky, once again travelling on Red Dwarf with the original hologram Rimmer, Krichton and the Cat, who discovers the ship's water problems are due to a sea monster in the water tank. After a brush with the squid-like creature, Red Dwarf activates a hard-like hologram of science officer Katarina Barkovsky, who informs Rimmer that she will replace him permanently and sets about crafting a dimension cutter to hasten Lister's return to Earth so that he can bring back a mate and start regenerating the human race. The crew are taken to a parallel universe where their exploits are actually a TV show called Red Dwarf. Barkovsky follows them and Rimmer kills them by pushing her in traffic. Learning that they die in the upcoming final episode, the crew attempt to find their creators by searching comic book shops, prop departments, and the coronation street set where they meet actor Craig Charles. In an ill-judged Blade Runner pastiche, they meet and kill their creator, only to find out the entire trip was a shared hallucination induced by the Sea Monster, a female variant of the Despair Squid from a previous adventure. While the others wait from the construct, Lister remains and reunites with Kachansky before deciding that real life is more important and awakening with the others.
SPEAKER_00Are you a Red Dolph fan?
SPEAKER_05Yeah, definitely. This is something that I definitely watch more actively than Coronation Street. It's one of the earliest memories I have of watching Telly with my mum and dad is on a Friday night and having a double bill of whichever shooting stars episode it was, which I was obsessed with. And then the opening of I forget, is it suck me a clip of the episode, the series seven episode with Ace Rimmer? And I asked that James Bond passage to the beginner, which was one of the funniest things I'd ever seen at that point. Just been up lane watching that as one of my earliest memories of like telecomedy. And yeah, and then I've since gone back over. I don't other than that bit of that episode, I don't have as fond memories of the Sokram Series 7 onwards. But yeah, I've gone back over and watched the earlier ones. I think most of the Dave Era is quite good.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, no, I agree. Most of it. Yeah, there's a couple there's a couple of like not so good episodes, but generally I'm a fan of the Dave Era. And for me, it's a show that I think it's probably, at least in terms of my childhood and sort of late teens and early twenties, is the show I watch most next to Doctor Who. It was just something that was on repeat. I've got very fond memories of it and I will watch it every time it comes back. I mentioned the landscape there. At this point within the science fiction landscape was Red Dwarf due a return. Was there n a need for it?
SPEAKER_05This is coming off the back of a long term took nail a train to get the movie made. Yeah. Which is a big reason why I think this is let's you know, bury the lead a little bit. Is the way it is. Yeah, I think it's one of those things that once you actually get into the Day of Era proper after this, and it's a sitcom again.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_05Like after that thing of like movie-brained sort of, you know, updates on the Red Dwarf official website on everything that isn't happening about this film. Once it gets back into being a sitcom again, once it gets back to the heart of it, then it gets good again. I think it's a thing that can definitely grow with age because it is the premise of these guys on a ship. You know, it's the same way as had Dermot Morgan say whether she could have carried on doing Father's Head for years and years and years. You know, it's it's it's that sort of sitcom settle. In terms of whether it was due or return, yeah, I certainly think people worked hard enough at it. I think once they got this out of their system, once they got back to art out of their system, in what is clearly not, you know, the the artist's vision of how big this could be, it's it's certainly like there's certainly some compromise around it, but then it's also bullheadedly going for the thing it wants to do.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_05Um, yeah, I I was really glad to see it back from like series 10 onwards.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, me too. I um I think it sort of felt a little inevitable to me that Red Dwarf would come back at some point once they'd abandoned the movie. And I don't think anybody was that excited about the possibility of a Red Dwarf movie apart from Doug Naylor. Especially with Doctor Who coming back and getting things like Prime Evil and stuff like that. I thought whether it was a remake, a reboot, or whatever, I just kind of assumed that perhaps it would come back for a couple of series one day. So I was I was very excited when it was announced that it was returning. Because it sort of it wasn't quite supposed to be returning, was it? Dave were gonna do a red dwarf theme weekend, is my understanding. And they wanted to do some little skits. There was a like a documentary called Red Dwarf Unplugged, which was supposed to be like an improvised episode. And then Doug Naylor goes, Well, what's the budget? I can do you a three-part special for that. And that's how we end up with is it three parts or two parts?
SPEAKER_05It's a three parts, yeah. But it's kind of I'm assuming we both watched it on iPlayer where it's presented as a one-feature length thing that's that's still shorter than Coronacea's tree beat for last of exports. You know, it it was broadcast as three episodes, and I really vividly remember that weekend of it being back on because you mentioned Planet of the Dead was on. So, like as Easter Saturday goes, that's like this is pretty good, this new Doctor Who, this new red dwarf, and then getting to the end of Saturday and go, fuck it hell.
SPEAKER_04Should have gone out, yeah.
SPEAKER_05Should have gone out, might have gone out after that, maybe. Just yeah, just like I need a drink.
SPEAKER_04I remember the disappointment of watching Planet of the Dead and then this, and just being like, oh no. But like Doctor Who was on a high at the time, so it the if even if there was one episode that went sort of a little down, I was like, okay, Doctor Who, the next episode will be good. Yeah, yeah. This three-part story, they've chosen not to do it as a sitcom, and certainly it opens with big CGI effects, big CGI. It's all virtual sets, essentially.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_04And there's no laughter track. So immediately it feels a little peculiar to me. What say you?
SPEAKER_05Yeah, exactly that. It's the first one they're filmed on like red cameras, so it's fully shot in, you know, not even it's just HD of the time. Like if I've got this right, it's just like it's pretty much 4K standard. And it looks like shit. It's just it's I like Red Dwarf cheap and cheerful as it is in those early ones. And I arguably as it is, has been since. This is just as I've said before, about this the opposite of this sort of thing, about this kind of Disney Plus, you know, HD streamed era aesthetic. It's expensive and miserable, not cheap and cheerful. It's it's just you know, when it's got CGI scutters and you know, the green screen set and the gulf between when you do CG effects, it's like putting something practical in to give it context. The gulf between the sheen of the CGI, and then when Rimmer's holding like a plastic tentacle or stuff, but it looks like it's shaped in Minecraft. It's like this weird octagonal tobleron looking thing. Even at the time, you look at it and see this is appreciably like a jump up from what we've had before.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_05But it gave me the ick then as well. Like it didn't it didn't look right, and it's it's aged really poorly as well with the CGI, you know, putting all that effort into having a CGI scutter just to straighten Rimmer's swimming certificate. Like if it was an intentional joke, yeah, then that would be quite funny, but it's not, it's just a really expensive one.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, and it's also we've got holograms wanting to, you know, send Rimmer offline. We've got a giant squid, so I'm not really seeing anything new here, especially in this sort of first 30 minutes. And then Doug Naylor writes the sort of jokes that need an audience reaction, even if it's canned laughter. So it's really horrible seeing these jokes not land and there almost being a space for the laughter, but it's just silence, it's like it really sucks the soul out of it not having a laughter track, I think.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, I think especially from when it when it's especially after Rob Grant leaves, his scripts have such a ring of like shaking blackhead dead to them. Like it's so much going for the Richard Curtis and Ben Elton style of like, you know, word, you know, word player that as you say it is meant to land, is meant to have that. I'm not gonna be a canned laughter studio audience bore, but just bear in mind if we say that phrase one more time, we're gonna summon Graham Leonard like Beetlejuice. So let's not. Yeah, but you're right, it is the dead air of it, is is something that strikes you. And and you know, less so certainly he's had he's done weakest, he's done weak scripts since as well. But in this where you know it's such a tee hee hee, the big thing is he's gonna sneeze on his course and then iron them, he's gonna iron his sneezes to wind for a row. And every bit of it is him teeing up to like, oh, this is gonna be great. And even Rimmer goes, You've been planning this for weeks, haven't you? And it's just not funny. It's a poor start, like to the look of it, and then that's that opening as well. But yeah, it's it's kind of grasping for red dwarf as usual, and kind of maybe hits it when it gets to the bit that comes after where they're in the diving bell, and Rimmer's just cowardly, you know, just staying up out of the way, out of danger, but being more anxious than they are.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_05Then all of the chaos that ensues there. It's like that's good stuff, but it's more it's poorly paced because it's kind of gone. I can do you a free part for that if if that is indeed what he said. This first episode really drags out.
SPEAKER_04Yeah. Because it's also like Red Dwarf for me is a 25-minute plot that you get in one. So if you're if you're going to do that sort of three-part format, you can't, and even if they're not all going to be set in the Red Dwarf world, you want the the first one to be the most familiar almost, but instead it's an opening act for a crap sci-fi film, is what it is is what it feels like.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, which is what it turns out to be. By episode three. I mean, we both watched the feature-length one, but um uh just for the benefit of other people who've watched it like that. So the episode breaks in this came. It's obviously also with it being David's the first Red Dwarf written to have advert breaks in it. Because the first ad break came, I think, after Sophie Winkelmann's character turns up. And then the cliffhanger is them going through the portal. Even I think the TV showroom thing is the start of the next episode. And then the brick the end of episode two is them tipping up on Coronation Street. So yeah, looking at in looking at it's and how it's dragged out and s where where meander's about in the middle where it stretches out. Yeah. It's like, alright, yeah, it's gotta fit that format.
SPEAKER_04Yeah. As you mentioned, at the end of the episode, they go into the real world, quote unquote. And so it's oh, the characters of Red Dwarf are actually fictional characters in a TV show. Now, I don't know about you, but I always fucking hate it when franchises do that. Like, I just feel like it's the last legs of something. Is that how you feel, or do you think do you think it can work?
SPEAKER_05I think in this, the my trouble with this is to jump ahead slightly, is that the last scene, which happens a lot in the half-hour BBC era ones as well, is the just sort of hand wave away the explanation of that. And what this is no good at is the twist is all that no, no, it wasn't shit. It was just twists. Like all that all that really shit stuff that was happening, it was just a twist. So this does all make sense to me. What they say at the end is they give the explanation, the men in black style, you know, marbles and the back type of thing. But but they don't visualize that, it's just creating explaining. Oh, we created a universe where we are a TV show, and the people in that universe will continue to think we are fictional TV show and we're the real ones. And if people keep saying things like multiverse 101, and in that way, it is a throw forward to exactly the sort of bullshit we're dealing with now in films and TV. That like, oh, multiverses. Uh, but it's never squared other than stuff like Spider-Verse and everything everywhere at all wants, it really struggles to square that circle where nothing matters and actually make everything matter. So the characters, and yeah, in this case, it's I mean, there's a good there's a good guy about you know, the the only person in the so-called you know, real world is the guy selling TVs who makes some disparaging comments about sci-fi, and he's the only person in the so-called real world who doesn't fucking love red dwarf. You know, it's it's easy, and they immediately make a joke like after that about you know the exposition machine saying he's got a very small penis, and that's he's on his photos of a penis in largemouth creep. But yeah, it it it it's it throws out into that, and it's all meant to be, oh, this is all Lister's, you know, fantasy, they're all in the shared hallucination by the end of it. But like it's second the same leaders it started on, it's it's really hack comedy.
SPEAKER_04Yeah. I think you can feel the influence of modern comedy. Sorry to mention the lack of studio audience again, but uh, I guess that's the influence of the office more than anything else. And then we go into a nerd shop and it's like, okay, I'm feeling spaced a little bit here. And it you're sort of in that thing of okay, this is what modern comedy does. And I just don't think Red Dwarf lends itself to modern comedy. I think you could do absolutely do a reboot with new actors and new writers and probably do it that way. But certainly, like it's not what I think anybody wants from Red Dwarf. Like, I just find that all that real world stuff to start with a little bit like, ugh, okay, this is where we're going. And clearly, when they've done the budget, they're like, okay, we need some real world locations, lads, now we can't we we can't spend it all on these CGI sets. And ultimately, we end up in Coronation Street, which is where Craig Charles was working at the time. How do we feel about how they weave in Coronation Street?
SPEAKER_05Well, the two things that when we suggested, like, let's pair this with FIVA Las Vegas, I think you and I both thought there was a lot more Coronation Street than there actually is from the way Ned's fucking complained about it for the last 15 years. Yeah. As if the the Cory stuff in this is more embarrassing than the blade-ruler stuff in this, which is all still to come. Which fuck me. Like what that's the actually embarrassing stuff in this. The second thing is that it's not actually like a crossover with Cory, is that they sort of go and visit in the real world the set of Cory.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_05And they've got who's around. They're they're kind of on the set, they're on the cobbles, they've got in the Starbucks-shipped car, and they've got they've got Michelle Keegan barely keeping herself from laughing the entire time. They've got uh how stupid it is. Um, and yeah, well, that's Stephen McDonald, Simon Gregson over there, yeah. Because he's like friends with Craig Charles's character, and you've got Craig Charles playing himself, and it's all a bit deserted, isn't it?
SPEAKER_04It's all a bit like they've been allowed in on a Sunday.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, yeah, it seems that way. Like, look, we sent all the older actors home. It's who's around, it's who can get a taxi, who wants to be in a red dwarf. Yeah. And it's that so it's it's an odd one, but it's it's just this odd thing that I think the the the curry of all of this, and it does come as like as a skate as an aside, as something that is going to get them on the cover of TV magazines, more than what Duck Neiler's idea of when they go in that shop, that space to sell comic shop. Have you ever been in a geek shop that had that much room dedicated to Red Dwarf? Like to match. They've clearly raised every bit of match they could get their hands on, like that someone had in their collection, to fill their shelves with in that scene. And you know, it's the thing, and again, it's explained away by this is Lister's fantasy, like he's a somebody, even if he's a fictional somebody. It's this thing of when they go to Cory, it's just a means to an end. Yeah, they're not actually interested in doing anything interesting. All of this is just doing you know, Star Trek 4, isn't it? It's doing the Voyage Home, but to a much greater extent and much more recently, even if you had the idea after League of Gentlemen's Apocalypse, you just try and do anything to distract from the fact that this is just League of Gentlemen's Apocalypse, characters escaping into the world of their creators and begging for more life, but you're not even going to do anything of that interesting with it. So you'll meet Craig Charles and that's it, I guess. Swan off into a really pretentious Blade Runner homage.
SPEAKER_04I wonder if it had been a made-up soap, like a fictional soap, whether anybody would have kicked up such a fuss about it. Because as you say, it's such a brief part of it that it's almost like within the confines of the story, sure actually find it works and it's not this offensive thing that people have been rattling on about for years. Yeah.
SPEAKER_05My larger thing with it is that the story is not very good. Yeah. That this is a not very good part of this otherwise stellar story.
SPEAKER_01Come on.
SPEAKER_05It's but it is it it is that it's that thing of everyone criticizing, you know, new Doctor Who for being too sorpy and all the rest. Well, you mean it's about people and their interactions with each other? You know, this hasn't yet settled back into that groove that like red dwarfs, you know, 10, 11, and 12 are much more as again, as you say, not so much modern comedy, not breaking any new ground, but they find that rhythm and they find what the strengths of that are is that you've got these actors in these parts and that these characters have those relationships, and you have a shorthand that you can actually build upon there. Well, so much of this is like it's it's you know, intermediary between alright, we might bring it back, but this is we've we're just getting all this movie shit out of our sister because the stuff they actually want to do with the movie, like the story stuff, ended up kind of in the finale of series 10. Like the beginning, the last episode of series 10 is what the movie was kind of gonna end with. Like literally, because obviously the the first episode's called the end, this episode's called the beginning. So it marries each other nicely, but this is just this is him going this like feels like the the release of Duck Neil are going around to financiers with cap in hand, saying, No, we have to make Red Dwarf, and producers being producers will say, you know, studios rather, financiers being financiers will say, right, what's the hook? And at some point they'll got very bound up in, oh, Lister is the last human and has to restart the human race. So this becomes like a plot in this for some reason. We mentioned Sophie Winkleman early, who's kind of there as as a hologram, as like Red Dwarf's science officer, with all the vibes of like a fan film that's got this really attractive like actress or model who wants stuff for a show or reel to be in a this like low-cut like hologram like Rimmer uniform that like was always just Rimmer's wacky fashion sets. But it is if it can all be written off as oh, it was all Lister's dream, well guess what? It's still shit. Because on top of everything else, it's the pretensions of that. Like that's one side of it. You know, Lister is the last human wants to restart. The other pretension, and the one I really can't get over, is all of the Blade Runner stuff. Yeah, you know, when they're reading the back of the box, the box the DVD says in in classic Blade Runner fashion. Like, one, like no DVD blurb ever would. Second, like, no, I caught bullshit. When was Red Dwarf ever inspired by Blade Runner? When was Dave Holland's Space Cadet ever based on Blade Runner as opposed to Alien or Star Trek? Yeah. Like when even like their killer robots, you know, they have simulants which you can like into replicants, but then stylistically they're a bog like knockoff, aren't they? So no, I call bullshit. This is massively pretentious. And you just want to do some sub-scary movie fucking spoofs of Blade Runner, where you're just literally reciting lines and adding a swagger to them. And and watching this again, I was much more embarrassed by that than I was by any of the coronation street stuff.
SPEAKER_04Sci-fi fans, especially sci-fi fans who work within the industry, need to get over their obsession with Blade Runner. Because it's a very influential film, it's a great film, but it felt like in the 90s and the early noughties, everybody was just like, that is the pinnacle of science fiction. But actually, by 2009 or whatever, nobody outside of nerds gives a fuck about Blade Runner. Sure, there'd be a resurgence in 2017 when 2049 happened and things like that. Like it ceases to be like your modern cultural. If you're trying to bring it up to date, don't reference the thing from 20 years ago, you know? It's like d do if you're gonna do a parody, parody something of the time, like Moon or something like that.
SPEAKER_05I don't know, but yeah, which which has much more in common with Red Dwarf as it's supposed to be, like Moon does than Blade Runner. I did like the bit in Blade Runner 2049 where Ryan Gosling goes out into the vast desert and arrives on Coronation Street and talks to Harrison Ford about how good Blade Runner was, and then uh come comes back to do the rest of the film. That was a good one. Which let's let's go watch Blade Runner 2049 again. My my feeling on Blade Runner has always been if it's an unassailable sci-fi classic, why did it take him so many fucking goes to make it? That's that's where I'm at on Blade Runner. So I I'll grant I'll grant you I've already come into this with a little bit of a I don't think Blade Runner is the text you think it is. But more importantly, I don't think Red Dwarf is the text you think it is. And that's not in a it's not as good as you think it is. It's it's plenty good. If you want to tell me that in Lissa's ideal world, you know, like little dwarf girl, as we're gonna call her, would be a name on Twitter, comes up to him and says, You're really cool and brave and stupid sometimes. And I know everything about Red Dwarf because I've been watching repeats on Dave. The the best thing about it is we we mentioned this with Coronation Street as well. She does mention their dad made them watch it. This isn't something that all the kids, all the kids are into kids love sci-fi sitcoms from 20 or more years ago. Yeah, it's great, it's great, but it's such wankery for so long, and then it tries to hand wave it away, stuff on its hands, it tries to hand wave it away and as you know, oh, this was all like Lister's ideal world. Why was it? None of that rings true. This is oh, I can do a three-part for that, and like, oh, go on then, and you went, shit. You're left with this thing where, you know, the hologram character, the Sophie Wenckerman character, uh just gets pushed in front of a car at the end of at the end of part two, cause you know, we we don't have anything to do with that really.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_05We don't have any ideas for that. Um, what we want to do is we want to spoof Blade Runner.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_05And maybe this will work as a proof of concept to bring it back. I don't know how it did, but somehow it did. It will have got Dave its biggest ratings. No, it did.
SPEAKER_04It did, it was the biggest rated thing ever on Dave. And and I suppose if in that way we can be thankful that we got more Red Dwarf out of it, but they all went, that didn't work, but did work if that makes sense.
SPEAKER_05Yeah. Well, like you, I I'm well I'm happy to watch it whenever it comes back. And I think that the next time they did one of these like three-part sort of feature-length things, like The Promised Land, the most recent episode, it was really good because it sort of sucks as trying to it's the fever Las Vegas of Red Dwarf. It's filled up, it's scaled up what the you know, what's good about those characters and and referenced back a bit, but wasn't just um a mashup of of back to reality and um better than life, which this is, you know, and neither of them go, haven't we done this twice before? Doesn't every time this happen it turns out to be a simulation? So you sort of and there was a big squid like the last time one of this happened as well. So it's just it's marking time a bit and it's an odd one, and this because so much of that stuff made its way, the movie stuff that they wanted to do made its way to the next series, which then also did new different things within, you know, Red Dwarf's actual purview. It's such an odd little artifact. I haven't watched this since it was on telly, because I said over those three nights, it was just oh wow, just disappointment after that much anticipation of that they're bringing it back, and then I got everything I wanted from the next few series instead.
SPEAKER_04I tried to re-watch it about 18 months ago for shits and giggles. Um when I got onto iPlayer, it was 20 minutes in where I'd stop watching it. So I I think that's all you need to. What about the the regulars then? So the one thing I will say is it's lovely to see them back, but how do we feel about seeing them again? You know, they're obviously slightly older, but I, you know, I think they're still recognisably the characters, even if the show isn't. But yeah, how do we feel about seeing them again?
SPEAKER_05Yeah, I mean, this this slide back into it's quite well, you know, it much as they do in the episodes since it's an odd thing of like the choice of Coronation Street is in there because Craig Charles has been in Coronation Street and is now like a lot of people I know who hasn't who haven't seen Red Dwarf now know it's that show Craig Charles used to be, because you know, Radio 6 and you know, Coronation Street was a big thing of sort of lifting him up to that thing of like he's sort of in that sort of that sort of underlevel of national treasure, like he's very familiar now on TV. But you know, it's before you know Danny John Jules is on Death in Paradise, it's after Chris Barry is in Tomb Raider. It would have been more natural fit fit, really, if you know, if the the red dwarf crew go and meet Robert Llewellyn on Scrappy Challenge, but it's just it's this it's this thing that happens that they've all been away doing other things, but I think Craig Charles has got the most eyes on him in that time. So I think that they're trying to give him a reason to come back, and I think that's another thing, and it's like this is what the one with like Lister tearing up and stuff, but it's like it's like we don't have him be emotional, we don't have him play that character well in all of the other episodes where that doesn't happen. And it happens as a way of it's another thing of bowing to fan pressure a bit. Of or I I don't think it's acknowledging your own thing of like of Chloe Annette not fitting into that ensemble after you write out Chris Barry. Because there's certainly bits where she does, I think it's a thing that Duck Naylor doesn't really know what to do with her.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_05And so the the most natural sci-fi impulse of all is fucking kill her off screen and have the guy be real sad. About it. So that's the thing that happens. Then obviously she tips up to just have the Sean Young in Blade Runner head fucking stink. Ridiculous. That's all the Blade Runner stuff. Forget that. The question was about the regulars. I think they all slip back into it nicely.
SPEAKER_04I'd forgotten that Chloe Annette even shows up for a cameo in it. Like So had I, yeah. Because I remember being slightly frustrated at the time because I was like, well, are they not going to explain, you know, like or show what happened to Chloe Anette or why Rim is back? And then it's like, no, of course you don't do that. Like, and also Rimgulf has played fast and loose with its internal continuity for the in entire run of the show. So if if they don't like something, they'll just scrap it. For me, it's always the core four. And even though I like those early series where Crichton's not there, it doesn't feel right without Crichton, it doesn't feel right without Rimmer. And I can do with Chloe Annette. Although I'm not perhaps as down on series seven and eight as some people, because nostalgia-wise, they were just an era where I was fully invested in the show. But even if perhaps bits of it don't quite stand up to some of the earlier things, but you know, they were trying different things. Yeah.
SPEAKER_05There's that there's that thing, isn't it? Like the the sort of people who talk about sitcom structure, talk about that quartet of characters. It's like patriarch, matriarch, craftsman, and clown. And not everybody has to necessarily fit into those things all the time. You can revolve around them, and those are the sitcoms that run a while, like different characters will fill different roles in different episodes. But it does really lock in when Crichton comes back as a regular. That's like one of the really I I feel like the show. I love those first two series as well, but I feel like the show really kicks into another gear once it there's like a missing piece there.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_05But it's the thing of like this, that's why I think it's been good since Back to Earth when it's gone, you know, it's it's playing to its strength smart. It gets what the it's the thing it's the tragedy of men alone in space and how funny that is.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_05That's that's what the appeal of Red Dwarf is. No, whatever this bullshit was.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, it's one of those things where it can keep going because there's something the tragedy is more enhanced as they get older and older and older. Like when they're young men having an adventure, you're like, okay, this is fun, but actually there is a real tragic element to, oh no, they've been out there for 65 years now or something. Well, 65 of their their life years, you know. Yeah. But I also like when Chris Barry said he wasn't going to do it, you can't replace Rimmer with the Kachansky of the early series because there's no drama in the fact that Lister and Kachansky get on and are sort of the same. You need to have this new posh version that's at lockerheads with the rest of the team.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, it's like all the stuff of the jealousy of Creighton. It's like if you want to go in that, you know, that quartet thing I get. The most boring thing you could do with having a female character come into it is have her and Creighton be jostling for the matriarch position. And it's it's it's this thing where it just sort of comes halfway between, oh yeah, we want to be on, we want to be an SFX magazine, this late 90s, like we want to be we're a bit with the laddie sci-fi sitcom and that, but also no, no, it's it's it's not. It's a bit it's it's tragic in other ways, this, what he's what he's trying to say. So I think you've just got a bumpy reboot to get. And I'm not saying that the the series synths are better because you know it's just back to four blocks. It's just a thing of I don't think Duck Neiler ever knew what he was doing with that character.
SPEAKER_04Yeah. Do you have much more you want to say on Back to Earth?
SPEAKER_05I don't think I'm ever gonna go watch it again. In the same way as Struckman Jordan View for Las Vegas, how much of you know 50s screwball comedy movie stuff it was doing, it really did go, oh, this was truly like he's pretending he hasn't seen League of Gentlemen's Apocalypse here, and he is just doing it much more boringly. I'm glad that we got over this bump to get to some of the stuff we've had since this gorgeous stuff. I've I've banged on about how good a sitcom is, but like one of the you know the top 10 episodes of it ever is the I think it's I think the episode's called Father and Son as well, where it's just Lister trying to do some discipline himself. He's just talking to a video message of himself saying, Go on, go sort yourself out and play this next message when you do it. And he just looks around and plays this one. You haven't done it, have you? And it just leads to this thing where he's he-enlisted himself, so now the ship's trying to kill him. And God, it's brilliant, and it's so good. And there's just none of that in any of the even any of the little skits where it's just nice to see the cast back at it. Yeah, feels like it could grow into what eventually came around. So I'm really happy that it did.
SPEAKER_04Yeah. The only thing I'll take away from this is that fandom needs to reassess it based on the level of Coronation Street's involvement, as you said, because as you said, the reputation for years has been the Coronation Street stuff ruined this, and it's like it's a mess from start to finish, and actually it's some of the least offensive stuff in it, I think.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, fans tend to be overly embarrassed about the wrong things sometimes.
SPEAKER_04So is it a clanger, a banger, or an average meander?
SPEAKER_05It's a clanger. It's the one I can't imagine ever going back to. I don't love seven and eight either, but there's bits and bobs. If I was watching these three from the beginning, I would jump straight from eight to ten. Because I might as well. They never address any of the clanger stuff anyway. So yeah.
SPEAKER_04It's a clanger from me too. I mean, I think if somebody sat me down and said you have to either watch Back to Earth or Coronation Street Viva Las Vegas again, I would choose Coronation Street, which is not something I'm sure that I would have thought I'd said just before Back to Earth was broadcast.
SPEAKER_05Oh, it's just as well we didn't do Corry Dale, which I show. Which you can from the name down, you can tell it's just the two things bashed into each other. Like how how will these two soaps interact with each other? Uh mostly they'll just crash their cars into each other in the dark.
SPEAKER_04Well, look, Mark, thanks so much for joining me today. If people want to find you or any of your wares online, where can they find you?
SPEAKER_05Uh um Mark Harrison.bsky.social on Blue Sky. They still haven't figured out the the URL thing with that, have they really? No. Uh just basically posting quizzes, articles, recons, that sort of thing. And uh got regular ratings over on filmstories.core.uk as well.
SPEAKER_04Amazing. Well, this has been great fun. If you enjoyed this episode, please leave us a review on Apple Podcasts as it helps people to find the pod. Look for TooHot for TV on Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube at TooHotTheNumber4 Pod. That's TooHotTheNumber4 Pod for the latest updates and additional content. Next time I'll be joined by Ross from the General Witch Finders, and we'll be jumping into the expanded universe of Dracula. But until then, I've been Dylan. I've been Mark, Ta. And this has been Too Hot for TV. So I really feel like I'll finally