G&TV: Just A Minute (20/01/94) Quickies Posted by Ian Symes on 29th January 2020, 20:57 Following the sad news that the brilliant Nicholas Parsons has passed away at the grand old age of 96, I saw a tweet summarising the various short-lived attempts to bring his seminal Just A Minute to television. Despite it obviously being a BBC show, there were two series produced by Carlton for ITV in the mid-90s, and just one glimpse of that garish, neon-adorned set triggered a vivid childhood memory of watching an episode starring none other than Craig Charles. I looked it up and it turns out that memory is indeed accurate; he appeared once, alongside team captain and fellow Dwarf alumnus Tony Slattery, on 21st July 1995. And that episode is... seemingly not online anywhere. Bah. Still, a handful of editions are on YouTube, including one from the first series that features not only the aforementioned Slattery, but also one time pub manager Arthur Smith, alongside a very young Graham Norton and Ann Bryson. Sod it, two guest stars is enough of a Red Dwarf connection to justify us featuring this, in tribute to its wonderful chairman. Read more →
G&TV: Pillow Talk on Night Network Quickies Posted by John Hoare on 1st November 2019, 11:43 Long before Paula Yates invited people On the Bed, Emma Freud was doing the same on Pillow Talk, part of ITV’s late night programming Night Network. And who did she have on the bed in 1987? None other than a certain Chris Barrie, who spends much of the interview looking fairly uncomfortable. They should have just had sex in multiple different positions and had done with it. Continue reading →
G&TV Special: Smegheads In Seattle Features Posted by Ian Symes on 22nd September 2019, 15:24 Here's an incredible find that was first brought to our attention by Tom Selway on Twitter at the start of August, just a few days after it surfaced on YouTube. We immediately sprung in to action, opening our to-do list and pencilling it in for September's G&TV. Which would have been fine if things like TORDFC's newsletter and reddwarf.co.uk didn't exist, both of which have featured it in the meantime. Nevertheless, it's well worth sharing in case those two passed any of you by, as it's not every day you get to see a fully-fledged broadcast programme all about Red Dwarf. Before Comedy Connections and The Making of Back To Earth, but after Red Dwarf Night, there was Smegheads in Seattle. Produced and broadcast by KCTS, a local PBS affiliate serving Seattle and Tacoma in Washington, it features Craig Charles and Danny John-Jules on a visit to the eponymous city in May 1998. It's a compilation of material from various sources: one main interview by KCTS's Ken Vincent, another interview with Danny solo, viewer Q&As from two separate pledge drives for the station, at least two different convention appearances, plus a couple of specially-shot sections, which we'll come to. After it initially aired, it did the rounds as a bootleg VHS for a while, along with another show from the same station, Swirly Thing Alert, but then disappeared and slipped from the memory, until now. Read more →
G&TV: Cyberzone Quickies Posted by Ian Symes on 30th June 2019, 16:00 Here's one that's been doing the rounds lately - a full, decent-quality (in technical terms at least) episode of Cyberzone has recently been uploaded to YouTube by Red Dwarf fan Chris Toone. The short-lived virtual reality game show was notable for several reasons. It was a new format from the brain of Tim Child and his production company Broadsword, in the same vein as their technologically-groundbreaking and hugely entertaining Knightmare. Cyberzone only duplicated that success in one regard, but it will always have its place in fandom folklore thanks to the presenting style of one Craig Charles, who adopted Hattie's cry of "awooga" from Marooned as a catchphrase, which was in turn "borrowed" by footballer-turned-presenter John Fashanu - a guest on the first episode of the series - as his own catchphrase on the much more popular Gladiators. The show saw Craig as the "Zone Warden", guiding two competing teams of two through a series of virtual reality challenges set by arch-villain Thesp, a hybrid of the GamesMaster and Knightmare's Lord Fear, played by James Grout. One team comprised two members of the public, taking on a pair of sportspeople, in this case world rally champions Louise Aitken-Walker and Tina Thorner, in the second episode of the series, aired 11th January 1993: Read more →
G&TV: Space Cadets Quickies Posted by Ian Symes on 28th February 2019, 13:26 We're going back 22 years for this month's G&TV, a fact that will no doubt unsettle any readers who remember watching it at the time. Not to be confused with a completely unrelated Channel 4 show called Space Cadets, which involved tricking gullible young people into thinking they were going into space when in fact they were just in a big warehouse, this Space Cadets was a 1997 panel show dedicated to science-fiction, following in the wake of other single-topic shows like They Think It's All Over and Never Mind The Buzzcocks. It was hosted by Greg Proops, with team captains Bill Bailey and Craig Charles. It wasn't very good. The format was pretty run of the mill - a what happened next round, then a picture round, a bit of Call My Bluff with sci-fi props and a final quickfire trivia round - with nothing particularly unique or memorable to set it apart. The shows were often shambolic, with panellists shouting over each other and Proops coming up short in keeping control, the editing slapdash and the production values failing to disguise the evidently low budget. Although I did like Greg's Davros-inspired chair. The first episode is available in full on YouTube, complete with original in-vision continuity announcement, and one of the guests is another familiar Red Dwarf face: Read more →
G&TV: Open Air (23/02/1988) Quickies Posted by Ian Symes on 30th September 2018, 16:39 Yes, with just hours to spare before this feature loses its increasingly shaky-looking "monthly" status, it's time for another treat from the televisual archives. We're going all the way back to very nearly the beginning this time, with an edition of BBC1's Open Air, a magazine discussion show about television, complete with contributions from viewers at home. This particular edition aired on 23rd February 1988, which you can verify from the reference to, of all things, Eddie "The Eagle" Edwards competing at the 1988 Winter Olympics ski-jump later that day. The more astute of you will have noticed that this edition of Open Air was broadcast the day after Future Echoes first aired, and host Pattie Coldwell is joined by Craig Charles, Chris Barrie, Paul Jackson and a semi-functioning skutter to discuss all things Red Dwarf. This hidden gem was recently resurfaced by Red Dwarf fan Chris Toone, and uploaded to YouTube by Chris Barrie Fans: Read more →
G&TV: Super Mario All-Stars Video Quickies Posted by Ian Symes on 22nd July 2018, 13:50 This month on G&TV, we're taking you back to the early-to-mid-1990s, a time when Sonic and Mario were competing for console supremacy, bespoke promotional home videos were an effective means of advertising, and a skin-headed Craig Charles was the go-to presenter for edgy, youth-oriented, low-budget productions. Combine all three and you get 1993's Super Mario All-Stars video, given away by Nintendo in the UK to promote its namesake SNES game, and indeed the console in general. The nearly twenty minute tape has been uploaded in full by games journalist Chris Scullion, as part of a VHS preservation project. Read more →
Let’s Talk About We Have Been Watching News Posted by Ian Symes on 11th January 2017, 09:58 Fans of Gogglebox, the popular television programme in which cameras capture the reactions of ordinary people as they watch TV, may be interested in We Have Been Watching, which is the same. Except that instead of ordinary people, this UKTV Original features comedians and sitcom stars, and their viewing material consists of classic comedy clips, old and new. The show started with a Christmas special late last year, and has since embarked on a full series, which is currently airing on Wednesday nights. Among the regulars are two elderly gentlemen named Craig Charles and Robert Llewellyn – truly the Bill & Josef of the cast. Anyway, each episode tends to feature at least one of the regulars watching the show that they’re best known for, and according to this tweet from Gold, tonight’s the night for Red Dwarf. No official word on which episode they’ll be watching, but if it’s from Series X or XI, this is probably the closest we’ll get to a cast commentary. So we’ll be tuning in tonight at 8pm on Gold, and if you’re doing so too, then this is the place for your comments.
“An enormous amount of Krytens” News Posted by Jonathan Capps on 14th March 2016, 11:14 Those with slightly longer memories will recall that, at DJ last year, Doug mentioned that he was planning an episode where "everyone was Kryten" causing much excitement/hand-wringing/wailing and gnashing of teeth (delete as appropriate) from fandom. Now, in an interview conducted at MCM Liverpool, two chaps by the name of Robert Llewellyn and Danny John-Jules have pretty much confirmed that this episode exists. There's no going back now... Read more →
Boards and Walls News Posted by Jonathan Capps on 16th February 2016, 16:50 It's been a bumper few days over on Twitter, so much so that we've been moved to collate it all together even at this early point in the week. Join me after the jump for a look at a storyboard and upwards of TWO pictures of some walls. Read more →
