Rob Grant
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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Red Dwarf is a British science fiction situation comedy franchise, primarily comprising eight series of a television sitcom that ran on BBC2 between 1988 and 1999 and subsequently achieved a global cult following. It was created and written by Rob Grant and Doug Naylor. The show originated from a recurring sketch, Dave Hollins: Space Cadet part of the mid-1980s BBC Radio 4 comedy show Son of Cliché, also scripted by Grant and Naylor. In addition to the television series, there have also been four bestselling novels, two pilot episodes for an American version of the show, and tie-in books, magazines and other merchandise.
Despite the pastiche of science fiction used as a backdrop, Red Dwarf is primarily a character-driven comedy, with off-the-wall science fiction elements used as complementary plot devices. In the early series episodes, a recurring source of comedy was "The Odd Couple" relationship between Dave Lister and Arnold Rimmer, the two central characters of the show, who have an intense dislike for each other but are trapped together deep in space.
The show's highest accolade came in 1994, when an episode from the sixth series, "Gunmen of the Apocalypse", won an International Emmy Award in the Popular Arts category, and in the same year the show was also awarded "Best BBC Comedy series" at the British Comedy Awards. The series attracted its highest ratings, of over eight million viewers, during the eighth series in 1999.
For years, the future of the series was uncertain. There were attempts to make a movie, but funding could not be found. The BBC then rejected plans for a ninth series. In September 2008, the official Red Dwarf website confirmed a new four-episode production (two regular episodes plus supporting anniversary and 'making of' shows) had been commissioned by the digital channel Dave.
