Hi, there. I'm a Brit - and it's a bit lonely being a fan of this wonderful show over here. I wouldn't say MST3K is unknown in the UK - it did air on the sci-fi channel (as it was called here) in the late 90's - but it is certainly little known, and that's a shame. I do what I can to spread the word. I caught a few episodes back when it was first screened and was intrigued by the premise, while also finding it very funny.Having read some of the negative reviews on here, which call fans and the comedians who did the show "Morons" "Drug Addicts" etc, it seems to me to be an excuse for the usual bunch of haters to round on something they despise or don't get. When you use terms like that, you've lost the argument. You either get this show or you don't - fair enough if it isn't funny to you; but to bandy insults around like "Moron" to those who enjoy it is a case of Freudian Projection writ large, I'm afraid.I will answer one criticism: sure they occasionally chose inappropriate movies to riff on. Phase IV, etc, which are really good films - yeah I get that. But if you can't laugh at yourself and the things you love now and again, then you need to lighten up. "Why so serious?" It's clear the writers and performers on this show have a deep affection for cinema. And Mike Nelson's follow up Riff Trax makes fun of modern big budget movies in exactly the same way. So there.I really love this show. I love the laid-back Joel Hodgson years, those wiseacre robots Crow and Servo, Dr. Forrester and T.V.'s Frank and I love the Mike Nelson years, too (although I still have a fair number to see of the latter.) The style changes; the voices change, but the show stays extremely funny. Best episodes for me so far.Manos The Hands of Fate - proof that there are movies out there worse than Plan 9. I want a Torgo T-shirt!Monster A-Go-Go. Ditto. These two deserve special mentions for being the two worst movies I've ever seen with utterly hilarious riffs.Pod People. Mitchell. Space Mutiny. Daddy-O, which has possibly my fave song "Hitch your Pants Up".Haven't seen Puma Man yet. Can't wait!I really wish I could buy these on region 2 DVD, to reward the guys behind this show with some of my hard earned cash - sadly, I'm having to watch You Tube. I'm delighted the show is coming back, and lets hope it keeps up the standard. Keep circulating the laughter...

...but you have to be in the audience to agree. For those of us in the intended audience, the iconoclasts or nerds or quirky people who love this show, it's the best comedy that TV has ever done. It probably helps to understand the humor if you're from the heartland of the US and about the same age as the writing staff, but those aren't necessary qualifications for finding this funny. MST3K takes the bad sf, giant-bug, and made-for-TV movies I will watch anyway on a rainy afternoon and makes jokes at their expense. Bad sound, bad lighting, bad dialog, bad acting, bad costumes, bad music: none of these are safe from the MST writers. Sometimes I feel guilty for laughing at their insult humor, but I can't deny they do it well. They excel at making interesting connections between what they are watching and pop culture, as when the potato- eating gal dies in Deathstalker, and they quip "She was all-righta" (a joke on an old advertising slogan), or when in Gorgo, they came up with a clever rewriting of lyrics from Lightfoot's "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald."The two actors who voiced Crow, Trace and Bill, are my favorites of the performers, but I like the whole bunch. The sketches are hit and miss, but if they sing, that one is almost guaranteed to be a winner. If you don't get it, I'm not angry at you. Many people don't connect with it. Some of the people who made the bad movies they poke fun at are resentful. (But dudes, your movies weren't great. I'm sorry, but they just weren't. Deal with it.) But for me, watching and rewatching every episode five or six times has provided me with countless hours of healthy laughter.

Love the show, always have since I first discovered it when I was a kid, but the problem I found was with the earlier episodes a lot of the jokes would just fly over my head when reference to what were current events in 1988 and so on, however I was born in 1987 so I wouldn't know.The comedians online get much of their inspiration from this series and it shows when you watch it and the presenters were so successful in making people laugh that they continue to do so today with their own company Rifftrax: http://www.rifftrax.com/ Noah Antwiler from the Spoony Experiment mentioned he wanted to start up something like MST3K, but he never got around to it and went with his own style which is for the better otherwise there would be so many people doing the same thing.all in all I thing it's a very funny series, however seems very difficult to get on DVD and I can't find any collection that has all the episodes, but I don't know why that is. I will mention, however that I find you have to be in a certain mood to watch it as unlike Nostalgia Critic of The Spoony One these episodes last the length of the movie and over so you have to be in the mood to watch a riff going on for that long, but well worth it on some of the terrible movies they do. Especially the one they chose for the movie.

I watched this show when I was in college and smoking weed while watching the tube was all I needed to "relax". Problem with such relaxation techniques is that you'll watch just about anything and lose precious years of real learning (from film and TV)opportunities that may have given some valuable insight and/or other stuff my life and personality could have really used. Somehow, my total lack of interest in making the act of watching more interactive, therefore more weirdly fascinating to me than other people (it's better this way!) did not totally mess up the lasting and probably annoying habit this show gave me for the last decade or so. I am now one of those robots (not as funny sometimes; more than I ever was before usually) whenever I watch most movies with certain friends, and this has done more for my stress management issues than all the candles, yoga or nature time I can afford to do. Downside? It extends to just about anything if you let it, which can be a little disturbing, I guess. There is a lot of real crap in the world and it all just needs to get ripped on whether it is internally meditated upon (some people are just too sensitive or plainly unable to be real, of course)or shared with others that have same nutty habit as mine.