The 10%ers: Possible Release? News Posted by John Hoare on 31st July 2005, 14:39 The 10%ers. First broadcast as a pilot in Carlton’s Comedy Playhouse series on the 23rd February 1993, with two series following in 1994 and 1996, it almost feels like a lost part of the Dwarf story; unfortunate though it is that it’s nearly always seen in the context of another show. What we need of course, is a good DVD release. So imagine my joy when I asked Andrew Ellard about it on the Webboard: We’re pushing for a release, because I think we’d do them well. (Obviously they wouldn’t get the full Dwarf treatment, but we’d work for a good extras package.) Doug, I know, is keen, too. There’s an ITV/Carlton thing to deal with, though, which is new territory for us after Dwarf for the BBC. But the timing – on the back of Gervais’s Extras – is pretty good. (Ah, mind you People Like Us, series one, got its release on the back of The Office and didn’t really get anywhere…) No guarantees, then. But it is being looked into. I’ll repeat: pleasepleasepleasepleaseplease. I saw a few episodes when it was broadcast, but I really can’t remember them now – and haven’t got any copies on tape. But I can’t imagine it being worth anything less than 15 ITV half-hours of my time – and quite probably far, far more than that. And I’ll follow my usual point – I’m sure if you slap a Red Dwarf reference on the front, you would shift a fair few copies. Well worth Carlton releasing, surely. Please, Mr. Carlton sir?
According to imdb Doug didn’t write any of 10%ers. That’s something I didn’t know, if it’s true. I would have thought he wrote or co-wrote at least some of the eps.
No, he did. IMDB just omits a credit for it. He wrote the pilot with Rob, and then at least six episodes throughout the two series (the BBC Comedy Guide is slightly unclear – they give him one credit for writing six eps, and then another one for writing one). But I bet Doug had a hand in *all* the scripts, like he did on VII. As one one of the recent DVD Details articles says, it was between the pilot and the first series that Rob and Doug went their seperate ways. I *still* want to know when the Rob/Doug/Ed discussion for Six Of The Best was recorded – 6OTB was released in February 1997. Did Rob and Doug do that *after* the split, or was it an old thing they did back in 1993 that took four years to release?
I wondered about that. There’s still a lot of confusing things about the Grant/Naylor split. I suppose the Six of the Best thing was done shortly after series VI. They probably expected it to be released earlier than ’97 but it didn’t happen because it needed to coincide with series VII, which didn’t happen for 4 years. I often wonder what a Grant/Naylor series VII done in ’94 would have turned out like.
