Red Dwarf XI: Sci-fi sitcom's return is 'smegging brilliant'

After a four-year break and a patchy history, Red Dwarf has returned to Dave TV for its 11th series – and it has been greeted with joy by delighted fans.

Rob Grant and Doug Naylor's creation follows the eccentric crew of a mining spaceship, the only survivors after a radiation accident. Craig Charles plays Lister, a vending-machine technician who is the last man alive in the universe. For company, he has the hologram of his dead room-mate and former boss Rimmer (Chris Barrie), Cat, (Danny John-Jules), a humanoid cat mutation, and a robot called Kryten (Robert Llewellyn).

The series has had several generations, first running on the BBC from 1988-93 and then between 1997-99. It was revived as a mini-series on the Dave channel in 2009 and got a full-length tenth series in 2012, which received mixed reviews but was enough to give the show a new lease of life.

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For a while it felt as if Red Dwarf had lost its way, says Kate Baillie in Metro. Series nine, for instance, saw the awesome foursome not only head back to Earth, but end up on Coronation Street.

But after some wobbles, series 11 is "bloody brilliant", she says, and right now there are some "smegging happy" fans out there.

Those fans made their happiness known on Twitter, praising the new series and quoting key moments.

Yes, the Series XI opener, titled Twentica, sees the return of Lister, Rimmer, Cat and Kryten and it's "smegging brilliant," says Tom Eames on Digital Spy.

He admits some of the ideas are a bit familiar and some of the jokes are a bit 1990s-cringe, "but with characters and actors with such amazing chemistry as these four, you can't really go wrong".

Newcomers might not get it, "but returning fans will surely be pleased", he adds.

Pete Dillon-Trenchard on Den of Geek says Twentica, was "an ideal series opener". The gag-packed ensemble piece effectively re-introduced the key characters and the plot, which saw the group follow a group of evil Simulates to Earth, only to find that they have banned science in the manner of 1920s prohibition, was fun, he says.

But Twentica is also a statement of intent, continues the critic, and this run of Red Dwarf is going to be "bigger, bolder and smoggier" than the last.

It could go anywhere and do anything, he adds. "That's a very exciting prospect indeed."