Taiwan Tony

[Taiwan Tony]

[Taiwan Tony]

EDIT. That as well.

[Taiwan Tony]

EDIT. Rein.
He clearly has the ability to reign.

[Taiwan Tony]

I don’t think Doug’s got the directing chops to reign in the overly comedic performances. I think the show suits dramatic sensibilities, as it did in series 1 to 5 /6, and it’d be a shame if they started copying Black Books or Father Ted etc. Because as alluded to above and before, it just turns into Cinderella.
I do like Lister, Rimmer and the Hollys. But I don’t like Hoguey, the medi-bot, Confidence, Ruby Wax, Baxter, etc. I don’t like Kill Crazy, I do like Jenny Agutter, Tim Spall, Don’t Warrington… Robert Bathurst.
So some actors have been crap, some comedians have been great. I guess I saw those names and worried I hadn’t seen performances by them I’d like to see in Red Dwarf.
This has been Right to Reply with me Roger Bolton.

[Taiwan Tony]

I want guest stars to be actors first, not comedy actors or comedians.
I’d rather have John Simm and James Norton than Alan Carr and Micky Flanagan.
Maybe that’s just me

[Taiwan Tony]

John! I was watching a couple of Seinfelds recently and to my untrained ear the laughs seem much more enhanced in the first couple of episodes I watched in season six to the later ones in season five.
I don’t know what I expect you to do with this information!

[Taiwan Tony]

Rob Grant?

[Taiwan Tony]

People who haven’t seen it yet can still guess though, can’t they.
I guess Kevin McNally as “Dadbot”!? Mark Lamarr as Angry Alien #3?
Widow Twankey as Herself…?

[Taiwan Tony]

I’d say it was better than series 7 onwards.
8/10.

[Taiwan Tony]

I’ve read the novelisation of the first series of The New Statesman, and the novelisation of One Foot in the Grave. Neither were as satisfying as seeing the programmes they were based on. But they were good to read.
Also, large chunks of the Red Dwarf novels are based on scripts, and they are arguably better than the episodes they’re based on.
So in theory I’d be fine with a reworked film script.
However, because Doug wrote those scripts during a creative dodgy patch, perhaps he’d be better advised to start afresh.
I’m finding it difficult to decide.
In short, I have no opinion.

PS. I have read other books as well.

[Taiwan Tony]

Hey Darrell. Cat is Felix sapiens isn’t he, so it’s hard to know for sure but he’s probably got it covered.

[Taiwan Tony]

Is Dick Bush canon?!

I wonder if Pink Dwarf contains as many gaping holes!

Etc.!

[Taiwan Tony]

“Well I say let’s get out there and twat it.”
The Nova 5 reveal is fantastic.
I like the boxer shorts a lot.
I like the Legion light switch joke.

I don’t really like So what is it? But I understand its appeal.

These types of lists are riddled with problems of subjectivity. But – even with that in mind… – number 2. Not even a little bit.

[Taiwan Tony]

> I try and go for things nobody else has written, if only because if a proper writer tackles a subject, they’ll do it far better than me!

Funnily enough, while I was reading your blog I was thinking about how much I could hear your voice coming through and how distinctive and great to read it is.

I’d love a Filthy article.
I recommend Roger Wilmut’s Didn’t You Kill My Mother-in-law as a reference.
I’d also welcome something on Happy Families as it’s something I’ve only read about and never actually seen. And there’s the Red Dwarf link, too.

[Taiwan Tony]

Interesting stuff. I’d noticed differences in hair continuity before – but only John Cleese’s hair when he walks inside the hotel to outside. (Location shoots obviously didn’t account for how bedraggled he looked after hitting his guests with a stick and falling through the bar etc.)
Outside the hotel he looks like he’s in the army, with a sensible brylcreemed short back and sides, and inside the hotel he looks like Reggie Watts.
Don’t you just love that bit in the pilot when he appeals to the policeman “Just one.”

PS. I also read your other FT post. I was really surprised to read that the Twitchin/fainting joke has been misunderstood. He says “Tw-” and sees the twitch! Then Twitchin says “it’s Twy-chin, actually.” This has rocked me to my very core.

Any plans to do a Clement and LeFrenais Dirty Feed in the future? Or a Rik and Ade?

[Taiwan Tony]

Anton Du Beke wasn’t someone I knew by name so I looked him up, thinking he might be in the Dark Tower movie.
I was wrong in that assumption.

[Taiwan Tony]

I’d prefer Rob Newman to play Ben Elton. And he can play the presenter of Rapido because I remembered that sketch as I typed this.

Idris Elba as Dangerous Dan McGrew anyone?

[Taiwan Tony]

Yes. Novel. Rob or Doug.

[Taiwan Tony]

Phil have you been reading my comments on the latest set report?

Red Dwarf XII – Episode 3 – Set Report

I hate to say it but I was only speculating about it being about murdering women.

[Taiwan Tony]

Excellent choice. Mark Heap! I prefer Is It Legal? but recognise I’m probably in the minority…

[Taiwan Tony]

John. What’s your favourite Simon Nye sitcom? Also open to others, obvs-iously.

[Taiwan Tony]

It really isn’t. It’s no part of me at all. I think about needing the toilet more than I do my unspirituality.
Perhaps a weak bladder is my spirituality.

Also, would you say Kryten was more like a child than a philosopher/preacher? I have him down as a robot-type machine…

[Taiwan Tony]

Are you about 28 years old?
That’s cool, brah.

I don’t want to be overly pedantic but who represents spirituality in Red Dwarf? I ask that, speaking as an unspiritual person.

[Taiwan Tony]

Oop. Missed out a word in my last comment so it may have sounded slightly more spikey than intended.

Apologies to anyone still reading this.

[Taiwan Tony]

Think I got a Seb one.

[Taiwan Tony]

I dream there will be 2 new Red Dwarf novels to tie-in with the launch of series XI and XII.

I hope there will be a new script book that includes almost but not quite final drafts, the same as Graham and Arthur did with the Father Ted script book a few years ago. Replete with black and white pictures and unnecessary explanations of technical jargon.

I fear there will be a T-shirt.

I predict it will be shit.

[Taiwan Tony]

3,000,050 years…

I agree. He might have an internal weight removed from his shoulders but he’d still be a git.

[Taiwan Tony]

Just watched your clips, Clem, cheers. I remember him now.
And if anyone had said that Kim Benson, from the same scene, was in 15 Storeys as well, I wouldn’t have been able to place her. I wouldn’t have even known her name. You would have had to have said she was the woman who played Gary Olsen’s workmate in ‘2point4 Children’.

She could have been good in the first 2 series of Red Dwarf. As Rimmer’s line manager or something. Actually, that’s sounding more like series 8.

Did that plaster come off you? … Well eat it!

[Taiwan Tony]

The firing squad! “I saw the card and couldn’t resist.” Yes.
Nigel Planer. Of course! “I’m the best man!”

Marvellous.

[Taiwan Tony]

> 15 Storeys High.

I’ve seen both series a fair amount of times but I’m fucked if I can remember the cheese/macaroni man…

[Taiwan Tony]

Who was the “cheese cheese cheese cheese cheese cheese macaroni…” man, and what was he in?

I thought he was weak in Blackadder. But he was quite suited to Jack and Jeremy’s Real Lives. He played the kitchen boy quite well. So it’s hard to pin down.

And I just remembered he was in Blackadder more than once… As the poet & as the Scarlet Pimpernel’s assistant (in series 3) I thought he was weak. As the German guard (in series 2) I thought he was good.
And he was in The Young Ones in an Alexei bit in the medieval one. And he was okay.

This is too complicated.

[Taiwan Tony]

>> you didn’t need to take the mick out of it.

> You’re new here aren’t you.

Hi Jason aka Smeg4Brains.
Help me out.
I can’t work out if you’re saying that the rather sweet ‘take the mick’ is not a phrase that gets used around here much, as we much prefer terms such as ‘take the fucking piss’ or ‘cunt the cunting cunt’…
Or I can’t work out if you’re saying that no questions/ideas here are sacred, and as such they are not above some friendly, light, jovial ridicule. And that they all get the cunting cunt cunted out of them….

What about David Tennant. He could play… Lister.
Curry… Smeg… Spaceship.

[Taiwan Tony]

Ah yes – that was very good. I’ve a strong memory of it being about American trucks… I haven’t seen it for a long time.
Speaking of 15 Stories, Errol was big in The Martian. Wasn’t he.

[Taiwan Tony]

> Lee Cornes returning would be nice.

Hmmm. Cornes has a tendency to be a bit OTT for me. See ‘Dick Head’ of Bottom. ‘Bin Man’ of Filthy Rich & Catflap. And anything else Lee Cornes has ever done. (Apart from Paranoia of Red Dwarf.)

Other exceptions welcome.

[Taiwan Tony]

> Sophie Aldred could play Ace

I don’t know how to express my admiration for this. So I’ll play it cool…. Yeh good.

> If the allegations are true

Um. I’m not sure we need this part of the sentence? What with Sir Jimmy being a dead paedophile necrophiliac….

[Taiwan Tony]

#rapprochement.

I haven’t liked Craig Ferguson since Jerry Sadowitz accused him of plagiarism. Which, to be honest, is probably worth re-evaluating.

[Taiwan Tony]

Paddy… YES. Those sound effects were lovely.
I’d like to see Lister smoking again, so a cigarette. And I’d like to see him walking around in shorts and a t-shirt… I’m not sure why. It seemed very natural. But that’s more ‘costume’ than ‘props’.
Lister’s Paranoia might be a nice character to have back. He never really got enough screen time to stretch his wings. Though I am against seeing a return from Confidence.

[Taiwan Tony]

I thought I was Spartacus…

[Taiwan Tony]

For balance (and so this doesn’t turn into a Cocked and Bummed type assassination) I wasn’t that keen on House of Fools. I saw most of series 1 and about 7 minutes of series 2, and I felt it was, maybe, a bit underwritten. Compared to “The Smell Of…” or “Bang Bang.” And I didn’t have the time to spare watching it. Too busy writing on threads!
I feel bad that I didn’t like it, but I do not begrudge paying a license fee. Because I liked Uncle (series 1). And I also like other things the BBC produces/will produce/have produced.
Until come the glorious day and they’re all shot against a wall without so much as a blindfold.

Or something.

[Taiwan Tony]

CBeebies is good! I will now never “surf” on the Internet again!!!!

[Taiwan Tony]

I’m of the opinion that things like that should just stay in. Who’s going to watch Red Dwarf and think “Ooh, I wonder when this was made?! …It literally could be from the future.”
Who? Only a yoge-urt.
What a pointless exercise.
I don’t like it when they cut the racism out of Only Fools & Horses and Fawlty Towers, because it sounds jarring to me, though I think it’s understandable.
Things like this should provide nostalgia. It should reflect the time it was made.
In 50 years time we might not be drinking milk. Then what? Or we might only be drinking dogs’ milk.
And etc.

[Taiwan Tony]

> Not sure who they could have changed it to

Anneka Rice?

Carol Smiley.

Anthea Turner.

I am old.

[Taiwan Tony]

Do you all know Tikka to Ride – best ep of VII IMO – is a story as seen in the Twilight Zone?

It’s good, this discussion. Anyone remember that episode of Barbara when Sam Kelly killed Hitler?

[Taiwan Tony]

I think of series VII as a comedy-drama.
The reason I think of it as a comedy-drama is because I didn’t laugh at it much.
But I didn’t find it very dramatic either.
So I am probably not adding to this discussion.
Or am I just agreeing with Pete Part Three?
Starting to read like a beat poem?
No.

One thing I will suggest is that, genre-labelling aside, Red Dwarf has always been a dramatic comedy. The crew being killed. The near-loss of the human race. That time Lister cut off his dreadlocks! You wouldn’t get that in On The Buses.

[Taiwan Tony]

Ah – so you agree with me. Good. I agree with me, too.

In addition to that, it’s worth remembering that a director doesn’t just point the actors the right way. A director can take writers to task and make suggestions for improvements. Renwick’s auteur skills were definitely over-stretched. A director could have mentioned, for example, that having Rik Mayall in a wheelchair makes no sense whatsoever.
Yep, the workload is too high. Ego maniacs the lot of them.

To be honest I haven’t watched more than 3 episodes of Derek. And nor should anyone. But a director like Sandy Johnson probably would have made it a little less evil to watch. That saccharine eulogy to Gervais’s popularity.
Some people like it though!

Can this website start a campaign to get Ed back? And Rob Grant? And make it 1994 again? PLEASE! I’M TOO OLD!

[Taiwan Tony]

>I think one of the biggest changes the show can make is to stop framing shots like a sitcom.

I agree. Doug needs a director. That way he can concentrate on the writing alone. It’s too much for one person to do everything.
All examples of shows written & directed by one person are not as good as the same shows written by one and directed by another. Even the BEST writers.
David Renwick’s One Foot in the Grave. The episodes also directed by Renwick are worse.
David Renwick’s Jonathan Creek. The episodes also directed by Renwick are worse.
Graham Linehan & Arthur Matthews’s Father Ted. Better than Linehan’s The IT Crowd.
Ricky Gervais’s Derek. Worse than everything Gervais has ever done in collaboration. In fact, worse than anything ANYONE has ever done, ever.

There are possible exceptions. But Doug Naylor isn’t Quentin Tarantino. And Jackie Brown probably wouldn’t be improved by a higher gag rate.

Fucking hell. Poor Doug can’t win… I’m a CUNT.

[Taiwan Tony]

I agree with International Debris about Hudzen. He was a genuine cause for alarm. I think the Kung Fu penis joke worked well because of its bizarre incongruity and its ‘rudeness’. (So strong he can do this to his cock!) It wasn’t just a silly joke about a willy. And though Caligula is harder to defend – the bucket of soapy frogs sounded too much like pseudo-Monty Python to my young ears – the Carry On Caligula delivery did, I think, disguise a real menace. Though I might just be saying that… WHO CAN TELL.
Dominator Zlurth I don’t know anything about. (Was he the hara-kiri one? I thought that was dreadful… I think I posted a comment along these same lines at the time.) Shit name, anyway.

[Taiwan Tony]

Simulant. Inquisitor. Let’s call the whole thing Dwarf.
Inquisitor or not, all previous threats to Dwarfers actually felt like threats – they were even lit and shot like threats. There was nothing dramatic (or, for me, funny) about a few rogue actors camping up the lines like they were channelling Constable Goody in the Thin Blue Line.
Westworld should be the model. Not My Hero.
I haven’t slept much recently. I think it shows.

[Taiwan Tony]

Number 7 for me, please.

[Taiwan Tony]

The crew meet the prophet Muhammad and are compelled to remove part of His lower intestine.

[Author]

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