End of Part One, Red Dwarf XII Edition Features Posted by John Hoare on 31st July 2019, 07:01 With the two year anniversary of Red Dwarf XII rapidly approaching, it's time to tidy up a few remaining bits of business here on G&T. Our retrospective DwarfCasts are already in the can and will be published before too long. But before those, there's one thing which I'm sure you'd all hoped I'd forgotten about. Yes, it's time for that sodding ad breaks article again. A quick reminder of why I do these. When I first wrote this piece on Red Dwarf X's ad break placement, I did it because I was annoyed. It felt like Dwarf hasn't even tried to adapt to being on commercial television, and its ad breaks were placed and presented in a most begrudging manner. However, this was almost entirely rectified with Red Dwarf XI, which did a pretty damn good job. Seeing as Red Dwarf XII was made in tandem with XI, surely the same is true this time round? Let's take a look. Read more →
G&TV: Take Two (1/6/88) Quickies Posted by John Hoare on 11th July 2019, 20:44 This month on G&TV, let's take a look at something we've been meaning to cover for ages. A shade over two months after Series 1 of Red Dwarf was first transmitted, Children's BBC show Take Two asked kids what they thought of the series. Which is automatically a very interesting little time capsule. After all, whether given by kids or by adults, contemporary opinions of Series 1 are as rare as hen's testicles. #OTD 1988: Red Dwarf first aired, on @BBCTwo. You're probably asking yourself, 'What did Phillip Schofield and some schoolchildren make of it?' Ponder no more. #RedDwarf30 pic.twitter.com/6M83Xiqd3Y — BBC Archive (@BBCArchive) February 15, 2018 Read more →
Let’s Talk About Stellar Rescue News Posted by John Hoare on 1st July 2019, 10:05 Look, it’s new Red Dwarf, everyone! More from us later… EDIT: There’s a radio ad too. Here’s a recording via the Fan Club on Twitter: Radio ad anyone? ???? #RedDwarf @TheAA_UK pic.twitter.com/RNvPNlankn — Red Dwarf Fan Club (@TORDFC) July 1, 2019
You Stupid Ugly Goit Features Posted by John Hoare on 12th June 2019, 09:52 ED BYE: Rob and Doug and I made the decision that it'd be better to see Norman rather than just hear him, because he's got a great lugubrious face. NORMAN LOVETT: Initially the money was low because it was a voiceover, so they can get away with paying you peanuts for that. ROB GRANT: Norman had been banging on from the start saying "Get my face on-screen, that's the money... NORMAN LOVETT: So I kept moaning and whinging about this. I said "Why have I got to do a voiceover in a TV show? Why can't you see this face, and why can't this computer called Holly look like this bloke here?" By the time we'd recorded the third episode of the first series, it had been agreed that we would see Holly, and we'd go and reshoot some of the bits for the first and second and third episodes... The Beginning, Series 1 documentary, The Bodysnatcher Collection The above story - in endless slight variations - has gone down in Red Dwarf lore. Norm whinged right at the start of Series 1 that Holly should be in-vision, the powers that be eventually agreed, and they went back and did some reshoots to add his FACE to the early episodes. (The real horror arises when you consider that due to the electrician's strike, where Series 1 was entirely rehearsed but never actually recorded, Norm was probably on his ninth week of moaning about this, rather than the third. Try not to let that shrivel your soul too much.) However, what hasn't been done is going back to examine those early episodes in detail, to see exactly how those reshoots worked. And when you do, you spot a few interesting details which haven't been widely talked about. Let's take a look. Doing this takes a certain amount of extrapolation; without access to the proper production paperwork, we have to do a bit of stretching and join some dots along the way. But I think the below makes sense. Obviously, to get any kind of idea of how this worked, we have to take the episodes in production order rather than broadcast order. Read more →
G&TV: Razzmatazz Quickies Posted by John Hoare on 14th May 2019, 06:21 This month’s G&TV is short and sweet. No prolonged, tedious analysis. No choosing something purely so I can rant about something which has been annoying me this week. Just a little something you almost certainly haven’t seen before. With many thanks to Gary Rodger for the clip, here is Mac McDonald appearing on Tyne Tees kids music programme Razzmatazz in 1981. As… a human jukebox. You’re welcome.
G&TV Special: The 10%ers Features Posted by John Hoare on 18th April 2019, 06:00 These days, it's difficult to imagine the sheer unavailability of Series 1 of Red Dwarf. Broadcast in 1988, it was only released on VHS in 1993, and got its first repeat run in 1994. For five years, the series existed merely as fuzzy off-airs, passed around among fans with increasing generation loss. It'd be really odd if anything major linked to Red Dwarf was like that these days, wouldn't it? On an entirely unrelated matter, today's topic is Grant Naylor talent agency sitcom The 10%ers. Which has never had a commercial release or a repeat run. And seeing as it's 2019 and both are looking increasingly unlikely, we're going to be a little cheeky. Today is the 25th anniversary of the start of Series 1, after all. So here's the pilot, broadcast as part of ITV's Comedy Playhouse in 1993: Read more →
G&TV: Filthy Rich & Catflap Quickies Posted by John Hoare on 30th March 2019, 12:04 RICHIE: Maybe it’s a producer with a wonderful part. EDDIE: Oo-er! RICHIE: Eddie, I said wonderful part, not attractive willy. When talking about Filthy Rich & Catflap, there’s many routes I could have taken. I could have focused on it being an ahead-of-its-time dissection on the nature of celebrity. I could have talked about alternative comedy butting heads with the old showbiz. I could mention the endless fourth wall breaking – done far more than The Young Ones or Bottom ever did. Or I could start with a knob gag. OK, fine, I’ll go with that. Of course, Filthy Rich & Catflap and early Red Dwarf are very much sister shows. Both were part of Paul Jackson’s pot of money at BBC Manchester, and were both recorded in BBC Manchester’s Studio A at Oxford Road. And both shared many of the same crew. As you take a look at this video from the very end of the series – featuring the show gleefully knocking down the last remaining barrier between them and the viewer – see how many people who also worked on Red Dwarf you can spot. But that isn’t why I’ve chosen this video for this month’s G&TV. Here’s a fun fact: did you know you can see the outside of Red Dwarf – that is, the hull of the ship itself – in those closing moments of Filthy Rich & Catflap? Despite it being recorded a year before Red Dwarf? Continue reading →
Take the Fifth Features Posted by John Hoare on 10th February 2019, 12:48 "Despite some last-minute shooting by Rob and Doug after the wrap party, Demons & Angels was felt to be the weakest show of the series by Rob and Doug, and so was placed 5th – the traditional place for what you think is your worst episode. (Despite D&A being great.) Nobody cares if you’ve got a duff ep if you’ve had four great ones before it, and end the series with a blinder." "Episode Orders", Ganymede & Titan, December 2005 Over the years on here, we've often idly mentioned the idea that the worst episode of any given comedy show should be put in the fifth episode slot out of six. In fact, we've mentioned it so much that it's almost become a truism, a cliché... and yet we've never really examined where it came from, or actually looked at whether it applies to Red Dwarf in any concrete way. Hello. I am John Hoare, and I am going to take a look at whether this actually applies to Red Dwarf in any concrete way. Read more →
G&TV: Covington Cross Quickies Posted by John Hoare on 27th January 2019, 11:00 Any self-respecting Red Dwarf fan has a few standard facts at their disposal. The first recording dates for Series 1 were cancelled due to an electrician’s strike. Robert Llewellyn was electrocuted on his first day at work. Meltdown was put back in the episode order due to worries about the Gulf War. Slotting in among these standard set of facts is that the village scenes in Emohawk – Polymorph II were shot on an abandoned set for a series called Covington Cross. And that’s… kinda it. That is The Fact, done, ticked, off we go. I don’t think that’s good enough. Let’s take a proper look. Continue reading →
Set to Rights: The Captain’s Office Features Posted by John Hoare on 12th December 2018, 11:05 Hello everyone. When we last met, I guided you through a history of three wall sections used in Red Dwarf in 1988. This went down disturbingly well. You fucking weirdos. With this in mind, let's continue our in-depth examination of Red Dwarf's sets in its first couple of series with one of their most famous oddities: the disappearing and reappearing Captain's Office. This article was intended to be a more general look at the Drive Room set, but believe it or not I have found enough to say about this single topic to make a full standalone piece. We're not dumbing down our material. It's always been this stupid. As before, we need to take this one in recording order, rather than broadcast order. Read more →
