Brothers Ross and Kevin Mains persuaded an A-list cast, including James McAvoy, Florence Pugh and Kit Harington to join their no-budget series, with uproarious results
“I got bored of making banana bread,” laughs Kevin Mains, one of the creators of possibly the most bafflingly brilliant piece of work to grace 2020: Star Force: Sci-Fisolation. He, along with his brother – the director Ross Mains – and friend, writer and
Actor Brendan O’Rourke – are the reason that on any given day you might find multiple Emmy nominee Caitriona Balfe pretending to ride her cat around her living room, X-Men star James McAvoy brandishing a drill-like a gun against Outlander star Sam Heughan’s banana, or Jon
SNOW himself, Kit Harington, swishing around in a multi-coloured bathrobe like a malevolent Joseph. All in different houses, recorded on their phones. All on behalf of a 25-year-old director who has just finished his shift in a call centre. They might be my heroes.
Star Force is the creation of SpaceBrosComedy and is something like Star Trek meets The Mighty Boosh, with absolutely zero budget. I first spotted it on Balfe’s
Instagram back in May, where it appeared with the caption: “Some people say this quarantine is making them a little crazy … I say I don’t know what they’re talking about.” I was hooked from the off. So far, I’ve watched Star Force and their dashing Captain (McAvoy) as they navigate the choppy waters of space travel, evil clones and evil scientists called Flurgzool, brandishing “space artefacts” (whisks), riding invisible space horses (“I am quite proud of that mimed canter”, jokes McAvoy), with nothing but stock footage and imagination to set the scene. A multi-verse created by A-list yet out-of-work actors in isolation and hitting themselves in the face for slap scenes.