I'm loving Series X. The gang is back and they're great. I really miss Holly (either of them), but the four guys really have the chemistry working again... It's almost like they were able to slip back into the glory of the first few series once they got rid of Kochanski. She was so forced-- A fly in the ointment. When you take a good buddy show with a bunch of blokes all being guys, and then throw a female character in there to be the love interest/nag/eye candy, you ruin the flow.
Besides, I liked original Kochanski better than alternate-dimension Kochanski.
That's not to say that I don't like shows with a mixed-gender ensemble, but that Red Dwarf had already established itself as a group of boys being boys, and adding a woman to the mix was poisonous to the formula they brewed. She was a good character, but in the wrong place at the wrong time. Besides, she also screwed up the major premise to the show: Dave Lister is the last human in the universe. Everything else is either a hologram, a simulant, an android or robot, a lab-grown creature, or otherwise non-human. Adding Kochanski took that uniqueness away from him.
Anyway, the new series is excellent. Well worth the time. It's the only sitcom I really care about.
