G&TV Special: The Strangerers

Features

G&TV logoThe 15th of February is a date forever etched into the history books of both science-fiction and comedy. It’s the anniversary of one of Britain’s most beloved sitcoms, from a writing lineage that includes Spitting Image and Son of Cliché, and with a cast featuring the likes of Mark Williams, Jack Docherty, Sarah Alexander, Ricky Grover and Morwenna Banks. Yes, Rob Grant’s The Strangerers debuted on Tuesday 15th February 2000, twenty years ago today.

Made by Absolutely Productions for Sky One, it was much-hyped as the channel’s first foray into original comedy commissioning, but it’s fair to say that it didn’t quite make the same impact as Rob’s previous sci-fi sitcom. It was never released on video or DVD, and has never been repeated since its original broadcast. But luckily, it’s all on YouTube (albeit in off-air VHS quality, with the credits cut off and irritatingly in the wrong bastard aspect ratio), so let’s all give it an anniversary airing and see if it’s worth reappraising.

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It is I, Le Cleric

News

Initial announcement? Check. Behind the scenes pictures? Check. First proper publicity stills? Check. The journey towards the broadcast of brand new Red Dwarf is progressing nicely, and it was about time for us to hit another milestone. While we’re still waiting for an episode title, today TOS has furnished us with not only an official synopsis but also a list of guest cast. Hurrah! Let’s go through it bit by bit, as is the tradition.

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Red Dwarf G.A.G Playthrough

Features

Many years ago, when a young teenage boy who for some reason liked to call himself “Ian The Smegmeister” first got home internet access, there was only one thing on his mind. But after that, I searched for all the information about my life-long obsession Red Dwarf as I could. I signed up for forums, chatted in chat rooms and delved deep into webrings, which sound a lot more sinister now than they did in the late 90s. It was undoubtedly the first step on a path that led to this place existing, for better or worse, and I’ll always fondly remember and salute our fansite forefathers from that era, such as Smegweb, Red Dwarf World, The Red Dwarf Clearing House, Groovetown, and Planet Smeg among others.

Inevitably, most of those are long gone now (although the Wayback Machine is always useful), but the exception is Planet Smeg, which I accidentally stumbled across a few months ago while looking for something else, and was amazed to see was still online. Its USP back in the day was its collection of unofficial Red Dwarf games, lovingly created by site owner Greg Haywood. I had vivid memories of playing his magnum opus, the Red Dwarf Graphical Adventure Game (GAG), a javascript-based in-browser point and click adventure. ‘There’s no way that will still be online and functional in modern browsers’, I thought. I was wrong. I fired it up and it was just how I remembered, only much wider.

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G&TV: Just A Minute (20/01/94)

Quickies

G&TV logoFollowing the sad news that the brilliant Nicholas Parsons has passed away at the grand old age of 96, I saw a tweet summarising the various short-lived attempts to bring his seminal Just A Minute to television. Despite it obviously being a BBC show, there were two series produced by Carlton for ITV in the mid-90s, and just one glimpse of that garish, neon-adorned set triggered a vivid childhood memory of watching an episode starring none other than Craig Charles. I looked it up and it turns out that memory is indeed accurate; he appeared once, alongside team captain and fellow Dwarf alumnus Tony Slattery, on 21st July 1995.

And that episode is… seemingly not online anywhere. Bah. Still, a handful of editions are on YouTube, including one from the first series that features not only the aforementioned Slattery, but also one time pub manager Arthur Smith, alongside a very young Graham Norton and Ann Bryson. Sod it, two guest stars is enough of a Red Dwarf connection to justify us featuring this, in tribute to its wonderful chairman.

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# Wipe the tear, baby dear, from your eye-ee… #

Quickies

G&T News logo in the style of the 90s BBC 9 O'Clock News titlesForget Harry and Meghan, this is the real story. After nearly 17 years of writing on Ganymede & Titan – I started when I was a useless 21 year old, and I’m now a useless 38 year old – it’s time for me to hang up my steaming moon boots, mumble something about you all being people I met, and say goodbye.

Before we see a digitalised recording of my final moments, there’s going to be a lengthy tribute, interspersed with poetry readings, read by… hang on, “digitalised”? That sounds fairly archaic now, doesn’t it? And if the material is digitalised, why are there analogue tape artefacts when Lister fast-forwards the tape?

You really aren’t going to miss this kind of bullshit from me, are you?

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LET’S LOOK AT SOME PICTURES

News

Oh, it’s all kicking off now. No sooner have the cameras stopped rolling on the new Special than still images harvested from said cameras have made their way online. They come courtesy of Pilot TV‘s latest issue and we present them here after the jump for your viewing and discussing pleasure, along with our thoughts on our first look at the Special

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Red Dwarf Special – Set Report (Byte 2)

Features

The concluding part of a very long episode of Red Dwarf has been recorded in front of an audience for the first time this decade. Well, for the first time ever, come to think of it. G&T were there.

It’s a now-familiar journey to Pinewood for Red Dwarf fans lucky enough to get tickets or brave enough to risk it on a standby, but the studio seemed a lot busier than it did for the first recording. Despite the rearranged nature of this event leading to fears that attendance may be affected, the marquee was packed to the wind-swept rafters, with the security team sensibly electing to conduct their checks inside this time, away from the bitter cold that the snaking queue outside had to endure. The higher than average number of production guests included James Baxter, who brought his Dwarf character to mind when he went through the security checks and posed with his arms outstretched.

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It’s Been 30 Days…

News

…since the first half of the Red Dwarf Special had a studio audience recording. Well, they’re finally getting round to finishing it at 6pm tonight.

There hasn’t been too many sneaky previews on social media ahead of this recording; the best we’ve got to go on are a look behind-the-scenes of the behind-the-scenes from Nathan Cubitt, and Danny’s video of Craig playing the piano in Rimmer’s officers’ club. Frankly, we could do with a few more pictures to sneak out in order to illustrate our set report, so keep an eye out and please do share anything interesting in the comments below. And given that we covered quite a lot of ground in the last set report, let us know if there’s anything else in particular you’d like to know about this time round.

Set to Rights: The Teaching Room

Features

After over a year’s gap, welcome back to Set to Rights, the series where I look at Red Dwarf‘s sets in mind-numbing detail. And having already looked at some thrilling wall sections and the Captain’s Office, we turn to what might initially seem an unpromising avenue for spectacular revelations: the Teaching Room in Series 1.

I think, however, you may be surprised. Because telling the story of this set leads us into some rather interesting areas which I don’t think have been examined before. As ever, we don’t have the paperwork handy to be able to check any of this: instead, we have to do some deduction, some guesswork, and leave some questions unanswered.

With that health warning, let’s take another trip through early Red Dwarf – as ever with these articles, in order of recording date rather than broadcast.

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There are some numbers next to it, but they could be anything

News

Just a quick one to note that, as reported by TOS, the second recording date for the Red Dwarf Special (which was, of course, originally the first recording date) has finally been confirmed for Saturday 11th January. That’s just eight days away, and it marks a rare return to an audience recording taking place at a weekend, for the first time since Lemons went before the cameras on what was pretty much the equivalent Saturday in early 2012. Apparently ticket holders will have already been informed, but none of the ticket holders that we know were, so do note that you need to reconfirm your booking by Monday 6th if you’re one of them. Due to the extremely short notice, and given that they were still giving away tickets for the first session at the last possible minute, it’s well worth putting your name down for standby tickets if you’re able to get yourself to the vicinity of Pinewood on the night; the link will appear on Lost In TV’s Twitter next Friday (10th Jan) at 5pm. See you there.