This post is a guest post by Suzie.  Personally I’ve never been into Red Dwarf at all and it’s something I feel I’ve missed the boat on now so it’s a pleasure to have Suzie here talking about the show and I’d love to hear all your memories and thoughts on it too in the comments!

Red Dwarf is a madcap British comedy. I first saw it when the kids were little, old enough to be left in the bath for a few minutes. I’d put the kids in the bath with some toys and walk away for a short while, the TV was still on after the news and I’d catch a glimpse of something really silly that didn’t make the slightest bit of sense and I didn’t feel inclined to watch it any longer. One memorable day they were screening the episode called Backwards and my life changed. A lot of this episode is run in reverse so you see most things happening backwards and I was totally hooked by the filming of it. I was torn between being grossed out by the eating scene which was being shown in reverse so you saw them uneating and undrinking and absolutely amazed by the fight scene which was, again, screened in reverse. I made the mistake of watching some more while listening out for the kids and was totally stunned with how this episode worked. They did a lot of work to ensure continuity was correct and this was made rather challenging as Lister got some bruises during the fight so we saw him complaining about the pain and watching the bruises get bigger and blacker long before the fight actually happened.

Basically the programme is set 3 million years in the future on board a mining spaceship called Red Dwarf. There is one human left alive, Dave Lister, and a handful of other ‘people’. Arnold Rimmer caused the explosion that killed the rest of the crew is now a hologram, The Cat is a descendent of the cat that caused Lister to be put in stasis and Kryten is an android…sorry, mechanoid. There’s lots of humour in it that will appeal to teenage boys. It was first screened in 1988 and was written by Rob Grant and Doug Naylor with a few episodes by Paul Alexander. Dave Lister is not your normal white hero, he’s a slob, and he’s not white at all but basically he’s a nice guy if you can ignore his dreadful habits.

There are so many things that are different about this series. The first is the language, Grant Naylor were very careful not to write any cliches or ordinary figures of speech or even normal patterns of speech into it, what they wrote doesn’t fit with normal thinking or normal modes of talking. It made it rather challenging for the cast to remember their lines. Chris Barrie who played Rimmer had very few troubles as he has an amazing memory who memorised everyone’s parts. Robert Llewellyn had the hardest times as he has a dreadful memory for lines and would somehow pull it all off at the last moment and if he couldn’t then they had boards with his lines on it just out of camera range. Robert Llewellyn also had a dreadful time with makeup, spending hours getting his suit on and getting his head made up before being able to go onstage – yes, some of it was shot live.

I’m going to have to take a few moments to mention Chris Barrie’s impersonation. You’ve seen him before on The Brittas Empire and have maybe heard him on Frankie Goes to Hollywood’s Welcome to the Pleasuredome where he did an impression of Prince Charles. He is a wonderful impersonator. One episode which highlights his skills is called Queeg. There’s an explosion and his files are corrupted so he ends up doing impersonations of various characters, ones we’ve seen and ones we haven’t, they are spot on. At one point he hovers between Lister and Holly doing one after another and each one is so perfect with the body language, the facial structure and the way each one talked, just brilliant.

Having mentioned Holly I should explain a bit. Holly was the ship’s computer who was played by either Norman Lovett or Hattie Hayridge. Both actors did a sterling job of this part and were only called upon to show their heads so were unable to use their bodies or hands in this role. In the episode, Queeg, mentioned just above we had the pleasure of seeing Norman Lovett’s deadpan delivery and then the double pleasure of seeing Chris Barrie doing Norman Lovett. Just wonderful.

One particular scene called for Chris Barrie, Robert Llewellyn and Craig Charles to really work at their lines as the audience was laughing so loud the actors couldn’t hear themselves. The scene was in Polymorph and we saw this creature which could change into anything, at one stage it had changed into Lister’s underpants and he put them on only to find them getting smaller and smaller while he wore them. He called Kryten to help pull them off and that’s when Rimmer walked in, at this point the audience is in hysterics and Chris Barrie has to keep the same look on his face for 20 minutes while Robert Llewellyn and Craig Charles continue, Craig Charles mentioned in an interview some years later that he couldn’t hear Robert Llewellyn and so was just watching his face hoping he was getting the right lines.

One of the delights of the programme is Danny John-Jules in the role of The Cat. Besides being rather goodlooking with a fabulous figure, Danny John-Jules spent some time dancing in West End productions before landing his role in Red Dwarf. He embodied the role and made it his own so much so that when they tried to reinvent Red Dwarf in the USA in 1992 they had to put Hinton Battle into the role. In my mind he was the only other person who could do the role justice. You might know Hinton Battle from the Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode of Once More With Feeling, he played the demon, Sweet, and did a wonderful job there. Unfortunately, for him he was not a patch on Danny John-Jules as The Cat. Danny was sensuous and fast in the way that cats are.

Basically, if you like British comedies you’ll most likely like Red Dwarf. If you like clothes and material you’ll love watching The Cat dress. If you like watching really good comedic acting then this is the show for you.

Suzie generally sells pre-loved books and part-work magazines on Suz’s Space when she isn’t scribbling bits and pieces about books on the Suz’s Space blog or hanging out on Twitter.  Suzie is addicted to books and TV, more specifically science fiction and fantasy.  She has two teenage kids (when will they leave home and create space for more books and DVDs?) despite claiming to be 18.