Sometimes, however, it's a little more strained, as when characters from later books make what feel like forced appearances in youthful incarnations.
They may have been in deep space, but life aboard Red Dwarf was full of your standard sitcom fare, from strained relationships to characters who never moved on.
And it has a strained relationship with the character's origins.
Both performances boast a kind of lean modern classicism; there's no strained updating of either character, but each has been conceived and concentrated for the intimacy of the camera, not the echo of the stage.
But in the often strained bizarreness of his characters, and of the hoops he makes them jump through, Quarrington demands a far greater suspension of our disbelief.
The script of "Place Vendome, " which Ms. Garcia wrote with her usual collaborator, Jacques Fieschi, is filled with superfluous characters and strained coincidences -- Emmanuelle Seigner turns up as Battistelli's current lover, a salesgirl at the Malivert boutique, and Jean-Pierre Bacri is a disbarred lawyer with a romantic interest in Marianne.
The strained relationship between Mr. Williams's character and his teenage son (played by Gregory Smith) is one he recalled from struggles with his own father.
(The Fourth and his father have long had a strained relationship. Other colorful characters in the family could emerge: Years ago, The Fourth's cousin Peter accidentally killed his friend with a rifle in his home).
But the attempts to interpret this story in light of the characters' difficulties feel strained and the redemptive lunar imagery is as heavy-handed as the larkiness and lavatory jokes.
One strand of a story that deftly skips among half a dozen major characters is the strained but loving relationship of the Grombergs' cantankerous patriarch, Mitchell Kirk Douglass), and Alex Michael Douglass), his son, who works in the New York law firm his father founded.
