Let’s go space truckin’
Flight Of The Bucket review
Production company – Superhappy Productions
Rating – 
Comedy podcasts are something that are very difficult to do right. There is a fine line between being genuinely funny, and spending too much time patting each other on the back with how clever and funny you are. If you add to that, making a genre comedy, particularly sci-fi comedy, you are up against some real heavy hitters. Spaceballs, Galaxy Quest, and Red Dwarf to name but three. (Yes, I only mentioned those because they are the first three that popped into my head).
So what’s it about?
The comparison to Red Dwarf is rather pertinent here. Flight Of The Bucket follows the oddball crew of the rusting hulk The Watercress. Led by their Captain Joshivia S. Standard (or Jerzy, as he’s known). He commands a crew of slackers and weirdos across space as they do their best to avoid work (and the authorities), or “adventure and excitement” as Jerzy describes it.
Series one kicks off with the crew heading off to take The Watercress for its annual safety check. Something the captain is happy about seeing as one of his friends (one “Inspector Hank”) is in charge and is easily persuaded to just pass the ship with barely a cursory inspection. Unfortunately Inspector Hank is not there, and instead the assertive, and very thorough inspector Lt. Gutman takes over.
The ship itself can only be described as a complete wreck. Barely held together with “space tape”. It’s literally a space garbage truck, full with potentially hazardous waste and awful rubbish. Lt. Gutman certainly has her work cut out for her.
The episodes are interspersed with entirely fictional adverts too. This is an idea that I really like in podcasts as it really adds to fleshing out the universe. I would go so far as to say that these fictional ads are (almost) the best thing about the episodes. They remind me of the 90s spoof radio show The Harpoon (but set in the future obviously).
Is it any good?
There are tropes galore here. In a genre comedy such as this, they are hard to avoid, and quite possibly essential. How they are handled though, is ultimately whether you will like it or not.
The characters are really nothing you haven’t seen before. The gruff, functional alcoholic captain prone to embellishing his past. The bizarre, cigar smoking engineer “Lungz”. The ship’s assistant Zach and the sarcastic and obtuse ship AI “Pu-tor” plus the aforementioned Gutman make up the crew. In episode one, there are a few other people on board the ship, but strangely they are not mentioned after their single lines of dialogue.
Whilst the “trop-iness” may put you off initially, the story is well written enough that you can forgive the shortcomings of the characters, because there are some genuinely funny lines here. I went back and started the show again, just to refresh my memory. I started this review a while ago, and a lot of podcast water has passed under this bridge since I began writing. While my opinion of the characters hasn’t really changed, my opinion of the writing has.
Final thoughts
Please don’t take the three star review as an indication that it is rubbish. As I said in a previous review, I am being a bit firmer with handing out “brains”. Last year, this show would have been a four. If I didn’t like it, then it would have been a two.
If you are a fan of sci-fi comedies, then by all means give it a go. I have certainly heard comedy podcasts that are way worse than this one. Unfortunately, I have heard better too, which is why this gets a 3.
You can get Flight Of The Bucket here:
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