Comedy, Chaos – And Cowboys! The Red Dwarf Companion Review Reviews Posted by Dave on 5th March 2025, 09:35 As a community, Red Dwarf fandom has always been pretty good at knowing when anything Dwarf-related is about to drop. We’re there for new episodes, whether they’re premiering on TV or showing up a week early on an app; we know when to expect new DVDs and Blu-Rays to drop (even if Play.com doesn’t exist any longer to get them to us days ahead of release); and we have a pretty good idea of any Red Dwarf books, badges, T-shirts, mugs, magazines, posters, models and figurines that are coming our way. (Ahhh, so you’re a keyring man!) It was a surprise, then, to learn from thomasaevans in the G&T forums at the start of this year that BearManor Media was publishing a new Red Dwarf book, Comedy, Chaos - and Cowboys! The Red Dwarf Companion by Joe Nazzaro. And not only that, but that this book would be a detailed account of the making of Red Dwarf Series VI, based on notes taken for the contemporary (well, 1994) book release The Making Of Red Dwarf. And not only that, but that this new book was also already available to order and read immediately. For whatever reason, this book had gone completely under the radar of most of us, with even the most enthusiastic Red Dwarf fans unaware that it was even on the horizon. But is it worth your time and money? Let’s find out. Read more →
G&TV: Book ‘Em and Risk It (11/08/1983) Quickies Posted by Ian Symes on 13th February 2025, 09:53 From the Robert Llewellyn interview in Smegazine Vol. 1 Issue #13, as recently revisited by the DwarfCast Smegazine Rack: RL: But I've known Mac for years and years, in fact I did my first ever television work with him. It was in about 1980, I think, in some weird programme for Channel 4 - it was recorded before the channel started. TS: What was that? RL: Bookem and Riskit. It was a pretty appalling experience. It was the first time I'd done any telly and it was a bit of a shock - very different to Red Dwarf and very different to anything else I've done since. But it did get broadcast - once - I think it was on the third day Channel 4 went out, and it was watched by about 7 or 8 people over the whole country, including me. This sounds like a job for the potty-mouthed archivists! We immediately set out to track down any known recordings of this obscure and elusive pilot, utilising all our detective skills, industry contacts and technical wizardry... only to discover that our good friend Jonsmad had already sent us a link to it months ago. So... good. The upload comes via comedy writer Bill Matthews (creator of Never Mind The Buzzcocks and They Think It's All Over, fact fans), who was a very early adopter of VHS. The sound is horribly distorted at the start, but it sorts itself out around twenty minutes in. Read more →
DwarfCast 175 – Re-Disc-overy: Series VII DwarfCasts Posted by Ian Symes on 22nd January 2025, 08:43 Subscribe to DwarfCasts: RSS • iTunes "A side-swipe at oven chips" As we enter the twentieth anniversary year of one of the most seminal short films of all time, it's an opportunity for us to reflect on our own pasts as we explore the The Movie: Yeah No Yeah No DVD, which features among its bonus material the entirety of Red Dwarf VII. It's the most personal trip down memory lane in our Re-Disc-overy series so far, as we not only commentate on the fan films, but also reveal all the behind the scenes details of the haphazard production processes, cringe at our past selves' incompetence, and consider how one simple film-making competition ultimately changed all three of our lives. But that's not all, as there's an awful lot to discuss in the rest of this three disc package too. Join us as we attempt to make amends for our past criticism of someone who really didn't deserve it, reminisce about the time Grant Naylor Productions threatened us with legal action, piece together Chris Barrie's whereabouts during the bits of Series VII he wasn't in, reveal the link between this DVD and the world of gardening, and begin to assemble our complete history of Red Dwarf via the medium of cancelling every single person involved. Read more →
Something’s (maybe) *not* coming (possibly) News Posted by Ian Symes on 18th January 2025, 13:50 BUT BRITISH COMEDY GUIDE TOLD US THEY WERE FILMING IT LAST OCTOBER. Things have been suspiciously quiet on the new Red Dwarf front for some time, following last year's unconfirmed rumblings. While we were always cautious, we did expect there to be some confirmation from official sources by the end of 2024, following the well established pattern of such things usually coming several months after the cast start blabbing. But while there's still no actual confirmation either way, Craig Charles has spoken to the Radio Times about it, and the outlook is suddenly much more pessimistic. "I’m not sure that it will come back, to be honest," he exclusively told RadioTimes.com. "I know that the deal that we had to make it this year looks like that might not be happening now. "I can't really say any more on that because I don't know much more, but I just know that there have been lots of conversations about cost, and I think [the episodes] might be too expensive." He clarified: "It's not that we don't want to do it, it's a case of we're trying to get it done... [it's] happening in television all the time at the moment, there doesn't seem to be that much money around." Read more →
Tony Slattery RIP News Posted by Ian Symes on 14th January 2025, 14:12 We have some very sad news to report. As announced by his team on his Patreon, Tony Slattery has passed away following a heart attack, aged just 65. Tony was at one stage one of the most ubiquitous figures on British television, having risen to fame as the breakout star of Whose Line Is It Anyway?. Panel show infamy soon followed, including multiple guest slots in the early days of Have I Got News For You, a stint as a team captain on the TV version of Just A Minute and hosting Channel 4’s The Music Game. His acting roles included the movies The Crying Game and Peter’s Friends, his own sitcom Just A Gigolo and of course Red Dwarf. One of the rare performers to have played two different characters on the show, he started off as the voice of the android actor in Kryten, before returning as Rimmer’s nemesis dispensing machine in Only The Good… He’ll be remembered as one of the most talented improvisers the world of comedy has ever seen. Sadly, he’ll also be remembered for his well-documented fall from these huge heights. He suffered terribly with depression and substance addiction, eventually being diagnosed with bipolar disorder. Those who attended Dimension Jump in 2018 can’t have failed to spot that these issues were still evident at that point. There was a very clear sense that he wasn’t being supported in the way he both needed and deserved, and that those who were supposed to be looking after him were doing nothing of the sort. Things seemed to be improving in recent years, with Tony’s public appearances becoming both more common and more coherent. It’s an absolute tragedy – if not a total surprise – that this brilliant genius has left us so soon, and that he’s done so without ever getting the opportunity to bounce all the way back. It’s abundantly clear from the tributes being left online in the last hour or so that Tony was incredibly well loved, with fans and fellow comedians alike sharing their stories. If nothing else, the incongruity of his current Twitter banner would have amused him, I think. Rest in peace, Tony.
The G&T Review of the Year 2024 Features Posted by Ian Symes on 31st December 2024, 14:58 Ah yes, it's time for our annual opportunity to take a breather from the relentless pace of Red Dwarf news, and reflect back on the last twelve months' worth of exciting developments. Or at least it would be had there been any. Something nearly happened in the late Spring, but that was about it. Oh well, thanks for coming anyway. While you're here, we might as well look back on the things that nearly happened anyway, plus some bits that did happen but weren't deemed interesting enough for a proper news post at the time, and a reminder of the nonsense that we ourselves churned out to help fill the void. By which I mean: Welcome to the Ganymede & Titan Review of the Year 2024! Read more →
DwarfCast 174 – The Smegazine Rack – Issue #13 DwarfCasts Posted by Ian Symes on 14th December 2024, 15:50 Subscribe to DwarfCasts: RSS • iTunes "Flicky Mint Cake" Welcome back to the Rack! The latest installment in our periodical drama takes us back to March 1993, a time when perhaps too much information about the forthcoming Series VI is being made public, Rob and Doug's relationship is definitely absolutely fine, and the elephant in Hattie Hayridge's room goes unaddressed. Join us as we witness a space monkey genocide, "enjoy" a double length Androids and contemplate life as a living fridge, a sentient armchair and a big fish-frog thing. Plus spend far too long indulging in nostalgia for analogue-based editing systems. Seriously, that's most of the podcast. In order for any of the above to make sense, you'll need a copy of the mag to refer to, which you can find via archive.org or Stasis Leak. Read more →
Doctor Dwarf: Who’s Who? Features Posted by Ian Symes on 23rd November 2024, 09:00 The world's longest running science-fiction series (if you ignore the sixteen years where only one actual episode was made) turns 61 today. Doctor Who is without doubt the second best British sci-fi show ever, and unsurprisingly there are multiple connections between it and Red Dwarf. In this article, we list the whopping fifty-five actors who have appeared in both shows, or in the case of Doctor Who, one of its official televised spin-offs. Not all of these people were credited on both shows, and some of them took some significant tracking down, but thanks to resources such as TARDIS Wiki, TOS's Complete Guide, IMDb's collaborations search, Movie Dude's Pictorial Filmography and our very own Smega-Drive, we think we've caught them all. Read more →
G&TV: Carrott’s Lib (22/10/1983) Quickies Posted by Ian Symes on 6th November 2024, 09:50 As we once again prepare to stick our fingers in our ears and try not to think about things for the next four years, let's take the opportunity to hark back to a far happier time, ie before many of us were even sodding born. We're heading back to 1983 to take in a crucial component of the Grant Naylor oeuvre. Having pretty much mastered the art of radio comedy with the first series of Son of Cliché, it was time to take on television, and the pair began successfully submitting sketches for the likes of Paul Squire, Cannon & Ball and Three of a Kind. But arguably the most quintessentially Rob-and-Doug feeling project of this era was Carrott's Lib. Starring Jasper Carrott, one of this country's greatest ever stand-ups, this was a pre-Spitting Image topical, satirical comedy, broadcast live on Saturday nights on BBC One. Paul Jackson produced the first series, but we're going to focus instead on the first episode of series two, for reasons that will become apparent. The first thing to note is the date - the series started just eleven days after the first series of Son of Cliché concluded on Radio 4, and given how last-minute a lot of those scripts were, Rob and Doug presumably had very little time to breathe between projects. This series also established a new supporting cast for Jasper: future Cadbury's Caramel bunny Jan Ravens, alongside the trio of Nick Wilton, Nick Maloney and Chris Barrie. Now where have I seen those guys together before? Huge thanks to Jonsmad for pointing us in the direction of this YouTube upload: Read more →
Starbug Spotting Features Posted by Ian Symes on 10th October 2024, 12:20 Since its introduction in Series III, Red Dwarf's shuttle craft Starbug has become almost as iconic as the eponymous ship itself, spawning t-shirts, models, playsets, televised competitions and even a giant life-sized version as part of an elaborate ad campaign. Both its interior and exterior have changed dramatically in looks over the years, and it's established almost immediately that there are actually multiple Starbugs in existence, allowing us to headcanon away those inconsistencies with relative ease. When a new set was built for Series XI, a knowing reference to this was included as part of the set design, with the ship's interior baring branding that reads "Starbug 19". But is this number accurate? Does it correlate to the number of Starbugs we've seen on screen, or was it chosen arbitrarily for the purposes of the gag? Let's investigate, as we delve through the episodes to tally up just how many times the ship's been destroyed and then reappeared, and track some of the changes and features which are unique to each iteration. Read more →
