Astronauts: The Complete Series

Astronauts

Astronauts was a little known and unsuccessful sitcom from 1981 about British astronauts going into space with a dog.  It was written by Bill Oddie and Graeme Garden of The Goodies fame and it was probably this that allowed it to get an airing in the first place.

The three main characters are quite different and mismatched characters.  Christopher Goodwin plays the upper crust RAF test pilot Commander Malcolm Mattocks.  Barrie Rutter plays Brummie Technical Officer David Ackroyd and Carmen du Sautoy plays repressed Medical Officer Gentian Foster.  Their mission control back-up is American Colonel Beadle, played by Bruce Boa, a Canadian.

The comedy of Astronauts was apparently inspired by real conflicts documented by real astronauts on NASA’s Skylab space programme.  Sadly, as it’s written by The Goodies, it’s really just The Goodies in space.  No, seriously, it really is.

The writing style and dialogue is exactly the same and even the characters are the same, even though they’re now played by other people.  Goodwin is clearly Tim Brooke-Taylor (who isn’t involved at all), Rutter is Bill Oddie and du Sautoy is the cooler Graeme Garden.

Unfortunately, whilst I did used to enjoy The Goodies, I just couldn’t get into this.  I didn’t find it funny and found most of the humour juvenile, the initial docking sequence in episode 1 a prime example.

Not one I’ll be revisiting...