It is hard to believe it is just over twenty years since Red Dwarf blasted onto our television screens. I watched the first episode for two reasons; firstly, it was the work of Rob Grant and Doug Naylor, writers I knew from their work on British comedy icons Carrott's Lib and Spitting Image, and secondly, it combined two life-long interests of mine -- comedy and science fiction.

The premise is this: the mining ship Red Dwarf has suffered a disaster in space, meaning most of its crew are dead. The only survivor is Dave Lister (Craig Charles), a slob who loves getting drunk and eating curry. Also around are a life form descended from a cat he smuggled on board, called 'Cat' (Danny John-Jules), who acts like James Brown, and Arnold Rimmer (Chris Barrie), a hologram of an unpopular technician. There's also a conceited computer called 'Holly' (Norman Lovett; later, Hattie Hayridge).

I was disappointed by the opening episode, so like the Smeghead that I am did not bother with the show again until it reached its third season. “Backwards” opened with a hilarious conversation between Lister and Cat in which the former expressed a secret desire for Wilma Flintstone. It convinced me that the show had changed for the better (I later caught up with the ones I had missed, and found they were not bad either). The same episode brought in as a regular Kryten (David Ross; later, Robert Llewelyn), a robot who speaks in a Canadian accent and who, by his own admission, looks like Herman Munster's stunt double.

The show could have been called Lads In Space. The cast were superb -- particularly Barrie as the conceited Rimmer -- the scripts cleverly exploited the fine line between comedy and sci-fi, and for my money it was one of the best Britcoms of the '90's, alongside I'm Alan Partridge and Father Ted. Among the many first-rate episodes were “Demons & Angels” (the boys meet evil versions of themselves), “Gunmen Of The Apocalypse” (the boys in a space western), “Timeslides” (Rimmer tries to change the course of his own history), “D.N.A.” (Kryten learns what it is like to be human), “Dimension Jump” (Rimmer meets a heroic version of himself - 'Ace' Rimmer). Best of all was “Back To Reality” in which the boys think that their Dwarf experiences have all been part of a Virtual Reality game. (Cat's cries of “Dwayne Dibbley!” -- his nerdy alter-ego -- were hilarious!) With such a strong cast and production crew, the show attained a peak of perfection unseen in British comedy for years previously – and, some would say, not since. It was also a hit in America, and they attempted their own version, which from all accounts it was not very good. [Indeed it wasn’t. - Ed.]

Naylor and Grant eventually parted company, and the absence of Grant, plus a move onto film and having Chris Barrie only appear in a handful of episodes, resulted in Season 7 looking a bit patchy.The inclusion of a new female character -- Kochanski ( Chloe Annett ) -- only made things worse. She was to the boys from the Dwarf what Zeppo had been to the Marx Bros.

Things perked up a bit in Season 8. Rimmer came back full-time, Norman Lovett returned as 'Holly', and Naylor wrote every episode alone, ensuring the comedy was more consistent. Bringing back the entire crew, including the Captain, was a mistake, though, as was the retaining of Kochanski. The show simply did not need them.

And it seemed, for many years, that that would be where the Red Dwarf story ended. Naylor tried to get a feature film made without success for almost a decade (I wish he’d spent the time writing the quality TV episodes of which he was so clearly capable). But then in 2008, Sky Television announced the production of a three-part Red Dwarf mini-series for transmission on the UK’s “Dave” comedy channel -- even featuring the original cast! Airing in April of 2009, Back to Earth saw our heroes having plunged through a portal where they discovered they were characters in a television show -- named, of course, Red Dwarf -- and that their creator (Richard O'Callaghan) was going to kill them off in the final episode. The special did have its moments, but not nearly enough to make this new attempt at Red Dwarf anything more than a half-hearted revival.

Still, it was nice having the boys back even for just a short time.

  -- Adam Fontaine