Rather excitingly, there was a BAFTA screening of Twentica AND Samsara last night, breathlessly livetweeted by @TORDFC. All the great and good were there, and Metro went along, too, judging by this article with its hilarious opinions. Apparently, Metro were sworn to secrecy. I count at least three spoilers, so it’s up to you, dear readers, if you want to waste your time reading that guff.
Amongst the rather pointless and ill-informed praising of the series having a ‘low budget’ (what exactly IS a low budget for a show backed by a major network, anyway?), is the interesting comment by Doug Naylor that Samsara was restricted in scope in order to provide more of the budget for Twentica. Not so much a ‘lol dodgy sets’ situation, and more a tactic that has been used in TV for most of its existence.
I’m sure Red Dwarf fans will be amazed by the sub-header “Good news – it’s the return of the lads”, as I for one was expecting an all-female reboot, Ghostbusters-style. Again, the fact that the main cast will be exactly the same as it was last series isn’t really a reasonable excuse to claim that ‘diehard’ fans prefer it that way. Also, the writer rather undermines their point in the next paragraph by mentioning that neither Holly or Kochanski are returning (based on the first two episodes) and claiming to be disappointed. Ok.
Point 6 of this article also claims that Danny John-Jules using some audience laughter to give him time to remember his next line is the live audience ‘basically creating the jokes’. Writers of sitcom down the years will be kicking themselves that they didn’t just rely on this great tactic, rather than actually writing jokes themselves.
So there you are. The great British media, ladies and gentlemen. Ganymede & Titan, as advertised earlier, will be reviewing Twentica when it’s available on UKTV Play on 15 September, and will be Dwarfcasting LIVE when the episode is shown on Dave on 22 September. We want YOU as a new recruit listening.
Jonsmad / September 13, 2016 at 11:49 am / #
With the news from the fan club tweets from Bafta that Samsara was originally titled “Lift Off”, I can reveal that guest star is David “Coppers” Copperfield who exits one of Red Dwarf’s sentient lifts wearing a special medallion and proceeds to act a bit like a cheesy john Travolta wannabe for a bit,
chardir / September 13, 2016 at 1:17 pm / #
If I had to guess I’d say the budget for XI is higher than any previous series.
Dax101 / September 13, 2016 at 1:34 pm / #
Its apparently less then X but much better careful spending allows it to look more expensive
performingmonkey / September 13, 2016 at 2:15 pm / #
It probably cost less than X because they’re averaging out the total cost of both XI and XII, which, due to them being shot back-to-back, will have had an overall reduced cost compared with if they had to remount everything, say, a year later to shoot XII.