If Holly were to return to Red Dwarf, which one would you have back?

[Jawscvmcdia]

Basically, if Holly were to return to Red Dwarf, which one would you rather have back? Norman Lovett or Hattie Hayridge?

Topic

[Dave]

Hattie, just because it really feels like it’s been ages since we’ve seen her at this point.

[Slainmonkey]

I would rather see Hattie for a few reasons, first being that I grew up watching series 3-5 the most so I’m more nostalgic for her Holly, secondly it’s been longer since we’ve seen her in the show, and lastly she deserves it more as she’s never slagged of the cast like Norman has!

[Ian Symes]

For me, it’s a choice between one actor who quit the show in the first place because they couldn’t be arsed with rehearsals, and who then had a complete meltdown after not being part of Back To Earth, and spent months slagging off Doug, GNP, the rest of the cast and the fans… or another actor who acted with dignity and decorum when they were dropped from the show through no fault of their own, and since then has demonstrated that they’re one of the nicest human beings of all time at conventions and in interviews. Both are very talented and very funny, and in an ideal world they’d either both have a part or neither have a part, considering all the reasons for writing Holly out in the first place still apply. But if we had to have one of them and only one of them, it’s a no-brainer.

[Taiwan Tony]

>But if we had to have one of them and only one of them, it’s a no-brainer.

IQ of 6,000, I’ve heard!

But yes, I agree completely. As much as I love series 1 & 2, I think Holly was better written rather than better performed. (I mean, had a larger and stronger part in the ensemble.)
I’d go with nice Holly.

[RamesesNiblickTheThird]

Hattie no question. Not to mention she seems to be more keen on coming to the meet ups etc.

If Holly never comes back in some capacity between now and when the shows ends it will be no doubt much poorer for it.

[Dax101]

I don’t really have a favourite out of the two but i am pretty sure if holly makes a return it will be Norman.

I don’t think Doug wants to bring hattie back, mostly because i don’t think he knows how to write for her compared to norman.

[JamesTC]

Hattie.

[International Debris]

I prefer Norman’s Holly.
I prefer Hattie’s personality.
So I’d be happy with either. Mind you, I can imagine either of them having aged being a problem with certain viewers. “Why’s a computer aged?”

[Pete Part Three]

Got to admit; I don’t miss Holly.

That’s possibly because Holly is very much a product of a type of Red Dwarf episode that I don’t think can be written particularly well any more.

Holly’s best moments were as a gag-machine; but seldom did his/her big moments have anything to do with the plot (Queeg and, possibly, White Hole were the exceptions). Mostly it was Dog’s Milk, Norweb and Hol Rock; all of which were great, none of which had anything to the plots of the episodes in which they featured.

When Red Dwarf attempts to do this sort of stuff now, it just doesn’t seem to work. The writing is not as funny, the plot shudders to a halt, and, in the case of some episodes (*cough* Samsara), it just feels like comedy routines squeezed in without any relevance to the characters saying them.

Who knows; maybe Holly is back for Series XII? But, as with Kochanski, I don’t see the point of bringing him back, when there was nothing for him to do, and the show actually functions perfectly well with just the 4 leads.

But, er, to answer the question; Hattie. Bored of Norman’s moaning. He should be pleased they invited him back at all for VII after the demands he made for III.

[clem]

Definitely Hattie. Pretty much what Ian said, plus I genuinely think Hattie would be better suited to the show the way it is now than Norman would. If we’re talking about Norm’s various jeremiads and whinges over the years, let’s not forget his bizarre claim that he was upset about “the female Norman Lovett” being cast as the new Holly because he’d been promised they wouldn’t replace him with somebody like him.

[GlenTokyo]

Hattie all day long. There are many reasons.

Norman was fantastic in I and II obviously, but he wasn’t the same in VII and VIII, they may as well have cast someone new, he just didn’t seem to give a flying fuck. The conversation Lister has with Holly in The End just wouldn’t be possible now because I don’t think Norman knows how to do it anymore given recent (18 year old) evidence.

Hattie didn’t have the dedicated screen time Norm did, but had some great moments, she is amazing in White Hole for example, I just find her funnier and more likeable than VIII era/ present Norm/Holly.

Also, visually Hattie still looks like Holly, surely that’s a big thing. Norman turned 70 yesterday didn’t he? Hair is white/gone, even in VIII his nose and teeth being straightened made him look very different to Holly even before you add the decade of ageing.

And for the sake of any future Red Dwarf commentaries, keep Norman away. Absolutely ruins the series VIII commentary. Seemed genuinely unpleasant.

[Stephen Abootman]

They should recast Holly and have one of One Direction play him to give a boost to the viewing figures.

Oh, and you should be able to win prizes by watching.

[Jason aka Smeg4Brains]

Holly is the one character I wouldn’t mind being recast, but out of the original two I think it would be nice to get Hattie back.

[Nick R]

considering all the reasons for writing Holly out in the first place still apply

Being redundant on exposition-delivery duties after Kryten arrived? At least it would make a change to hear “best guess…” coming from Holly instead!

There are scenes in XI where Holly could have fitted. The “could these life signs by any chance be us?” joke might have worked as well if it was Holly making that mistake instead of Rimmer.

[Dave]

A new Holly might be interesting. Is Bill Bailey busy at the moment?

[Dax101]

Thing about Norman is he has such an ego that its gonna have an effect on the character just like it did with series 8 where doug said norman didn’t wanna do exposition and just wanted to do jokes, well he got that and norman spent alot of time after complaining about the drop in quality, presumably because the fans were not talking about how awesome he was in series 8

So if norman returns as holly which he probably will i fear his ego will float over the character head and doug will have to appease that ego.

Although i will say the stuff in Samsara with Cat talking about history and getting it wrong could easily have come from the holly character instead and would have actually maybe fit holly better than cat, but than its the whole writing a dumb character.

[Mr-Stabby]

I would go for Hattie for the reasons everyone has said above, but mainly because she gave Series 3-5 so much rewatchability. Even when she had no lines and the focus wasn’t on her, you could look at what Hattie was doing with no dialogue at all and still get a laugh or get a new reaction out of her. Look at her when Deck Sergeant Sam Murray appears in Holoship. Look at her when Kryten is talking to Rimmer over the intercom in Quarantine. There are so many examples of her just doing funny bits when left to her own devices. But also as we’ve heard from Hattie herself, she can suggest things that Holly can do that weren’t in the script. Ducking when the Simulant fires at her in Justice, fainting in Dimension Jump.

You’ve got all the above with Hattie. Norman would do none of that. He would just sit there and look bored.

The only thing that puts me off the idea is that the four main cast really do get on well with each other. They clearly don’t like Norm very much, but at the same time I don’t think they’re great friends with Hattie either are they? With the exception of Bobby. In the commentaries, they tend to ignore her.

[RamesesNiblickTheThird]

^ nailed it x100000000000

[Slainmonkey]

That was the great thing with Hattie, she had less to work with but did so much more with it. Norman had the opportunity to do the same in series 8…..and we all know how that went, granted the jokes weren’t all there but he did nothing to even try an elevate them…..Infact his delivery might have even been worse then the jokes themselves!

[Jawscvmcdia]

Here’s a transcription of the comments made about the departure on Norman Lovett, taken from the Red Dwarf Bodysnatcher documentary in 2007.

Rob Grant: Nobody wanted Norman to go, including Norman I think.

Norman Lovett: I’d gone to Edinburgh, I’d met my wife and I decided to live in Edinburgh with her. I was also doing a series in Glasgow, I Lovett. I’d done two series of Don’t Miss Wax, two series of Red Dwarf, and I don’t know whether I saw it as a progression of saying “right I’ll do my own series now – two series of that perhaps”.

Paul Jackson: So he asked to be allowed to not come to rehearsal in London. He said “look. I’m in Edinburgh. I’ve got to come all the way down to London, then I go up to Manchester, then I go home. Quite frankly, I only sit on a stool (and) you don’t need me for camera rehearsals.” And I just felt that that was, I suppose there’s no other word than bad attitude. I mean maybe I was too picky at the time.

Doug Naylor: And the reason we wanted Norman at rehearsals is you need him around to test things on. You can’t show up and do ‘Queeg’ the day before, because it doesn’t give the writers a chance to see if the lines are working, or give you more. When you have someone like Norman who is funny, really funny, we’re kind of like comedy vampires, we’re able to suck humour out of just being around someone and seeing the way they drink a cup of tea, or his intonation the way he says the word yellow. If he’s not there you can’t do that.

Paul Jackson: And it’s just not fair to expect the actors to go into what is a technical environment in the studio. When you get into a studio you’re not rehearsing for the actors anymore. You spend a day or a day and a half sometimes literally blocking for sound and cameras and VT and costumes and so on. So if Norman had just been joining us at that point, the first time they’d have all performed the piece together would have been in front of the audience and I thought that wasn’t fair on anybody. So I said to Norman, “look, I don’t need you here all week but I do need you here for a day, two days” I can’t remember.

Norman Lovett: And they said “yeah, okay we can knock a day off, but we’re also going to knock quite a lot of the fee off”. And I said well I’m not doing it!”. I said I want the same as what they said they we’re going to pay me in the first place.

Paul Jackson: I think he thought that we would have no option, because he was Holly.

Norman Lovett: I think Paul Jackson was your typical producer. You know “I’m not putting up with this, get out of the show!”, you know. I think he made a big mistake by acting like that and not really thinking about it. It could have been resolved.

Craig Charles: I think Norman regrets his decision tremendously. And I regret his decision as well; because he was a much valued member of the crew and a lovely bloke and personal friend, and you kind of wish he’d done the whole journey with you.

Chris Barrie: But then maybe if you look at the two main players in that little scenario, then it was two fairly immovable beasts, really.

Doug Naylor: If it was me involved now, there’s no way he would have left. I would have put an arm round Paul and an arm round him and we would have gone into a room and we would have sorted it out.

Norman Lovett: And also they promised me that they would replace my part with a complete different character. So you never believe what they tell you, because Hattie played the part. So, they just lied to me basically.

Doug Naylor: Why would you go “Norman, you’re making this crazy decision to go off, but in deference to you, we are going to leave a special hallow piece of ground around the character so we’ll never come near that, because thank you for leaving and making this idiotic decision, but rest assured we will have someone completely different”. We would never do that, of course you wouldn’t. What you would say is “Norman, you’re mad, please come back”. And then he goes “no I’m not”, you go “okay, fine. That’s really sad. Thanks, bye.” And then you go, who you gonna get?

Hattie Hayridge: I kind of felt that was my normal type of thing. I didn’t feel I did it too much like Norman. I didn’t go out of my way to do it like Norman. It was just how Holly was.

Craig Charles: And Norman Lovett on the phone to me going “she’s robbing my act! She’s robbing my act, Craig! She’s robbing my act!”. “Why couldn’t she be someone else!? Why couldn’t she do it a different way!? She’s just being me!” Oh, Norman. It’s not my fault.

[si]

Is Bill Bailey busy at the moment?

He’s making a sitcom set in a zoo.

[si]

Oh, no, It’s set in a wildlife park, sorry.

http://www.chortle.co.uk/news/2016/10/08/25959/bbc_commissions_bill_bailey_sitcom

[Jonsmad]

Willoughby

[si]

Holly. Near left.
Vimto not included.
http://bit.ly/2exEHSxhttp://bit.ly/2exEHSx

[si]

Or even bit.ly/2exEHSx

[si]

OH FOR FUCK’S SAKE.
http://bit.ly/2exEHSx

It’s not even that funny.

[International Debris]

Whimiscal humour, talking animals, clueless wildlife park owner. Oh God it’s The Mighty Boosh.

[Phobos And Deimos]

The bloke who plays Gordon in Remastered.

[Pete Part Three]

Which Holly?

[Phobos And Deimos]

Which ‘Which Holly would you like back in a future series’ thread would you like to have back?

[Pete Part Three]

The one started by Jawscvmcdia.

Oh.

[si]

The old thread, definitely.

Which Holly?

[Phobos And Deimos]

I keep reading it as Jew Media.

[Author]

Replies