I finally got around to watching the Red Dwarf: Back to Earth specials last night, after they'd been on nearly a year ago. They were completely awful. Initially that was going to be my entire review, but in the later parts, I decided that to be fair to them, they were either an absurdist bit of series metafiction that fell a bit short of the mark, or they were actually completely awful.

And I'm leaning towards the latter side at the moment, because the whole thing felt so cringeworthy to watch - to cut a long story short, the crew fall through a portal into another dimension where they discover that they're actually just characters on a TV programme and have to find their creator to prevent their series from being cancelled, after which the whole thing is revealed to be a recycled plot from an earlier episode done significantly less well. The whole thing felt like one hundred percent fanfiction, with the jokes coming from each character being a total exaggeration of their former selves, and episodes and people being smugly name-dropped throughout. Even though it wants you to find it funny, it also seems to suffer from the same problem as Series 7, where it started wanting to be taken seriously and it just wasn't mature enough to make it - this one feels rather like the modern Doctor Who series, with the increased special effects budget and film look.

The best part - or rather one of the identifiably all right parts - was something that nearly caused me to bang my head off the desk when I first saw it, but then turned around as it got more and more unlikely - when placed among less comedic scenes the jokes are almost done in too straight-faced a way to even be deadpan comedy. It's the CSI-style photo scene (though it's in the context of a much wider reference to Blade Runner).

I used to love Red Dwarf when I was twelve, though a lot of it seems childish to me now - perhaps that's an effect of the age I used to watch it. Or maybe it just is. Nevertheless, I think I'll have to spend some time watching earlier episodes in the hope of reminding myself that it used to be quite good. Some things should be left in the past!