Italiani nello Spazio (2004)

This TV series pays tribute to the little guys who do the nitty-gritty jobs, including in the future. In science fiction films, far from seeing space heroes, we usually see little faces behind little windows in space stations. These are the professionals who go about their tasks with robot precision. In fact they're often mistaken for robots (this happens all the time in sci-fi movies...) I imagine these professionals being replaced, in accordance with NASA and ESA regulations, by two inept slackers from Rome, OTELLO and MARIO Stuck on the lowest level of the furthest international space station orbiting the earth, in an infinitesimal cockpit somewhere between a phone booth and a TV director's cubbyhole, they languish in front of their monitors, bored and frustrated. Their job is to direct traffic of spaceships to and from this spatial condominium, and the fact that they are dealing with astronauts from all over the world, speaking numerous languages, and that they can't even string together two words of English, leads to all kinds of misunderstandings in this ten-episode series. So this Laurel and Hardy duo is dealing with all kinds of human specimens ranging from an American commander reminiscent of Big Jim, to a Russian female scientist who looks like Barbie. They monitor, or rather spy on, everybody at the station who are performing experiments, doing maintenance and spacewalking. They carry on a steady stream of banter, making fun of and criticizing everybody, while their own lack of discipline and expertise makes for continual mishaps.