TV: Red Dwarf

Red Dwarf

Cult science-fiction sit-com that went where none had gone before - eight series.

Mix together Dark Star and Alien with the scuzzy comedy of The Young Ones, and you get this - Red Dwarf, the anarchic creation of Doug Naylor and Rob Grant.

The story concerns the last few crew members of the titular spaceship after a radiation leak kills almost everyone on board. Three million years later, the story's 'hero' - a Dave Lister - emerges from stasis to find he is the last human being alive. This genial slob's only companions are a hologram of his dead bunkmate (the neurotic Arnold Rimmer), a 'man' who evolved from his cat, a fussy android and a senile computer. Red Dwarf's writers, Rob Grant and Doug Naylor, had cut their comedy teeth in radio and as head writers for television's Spitting Image. Having tried and failed to get the programme commissioned through the usual channels, they took it to Paul Jackson and BBC North West, Jackson himself a producer stalwart of many BBC comedy classics.

Many recall its inauspicious debut on BBC Two in 1988, where its grey sets were neatly offset by the sharp scripts and imaginative plots. From series three onwards, a change of design moved the series into a higher gear, and as the series progressed through the 1990s to eight series - a feat in itself - it was for some time the only substantial science fiction on BBC television.

One of the few "SF comedies" that can claim to be both genuine science fiction and actually funny, it withstood the departure of co-creator Rob Grant after series 6, and many are still awaiting the long-promised movie version.