The Return of The Return of The Return of Red Dwarf

[Richard Brinck-Johnsen]

Latest news after a delay getting all the main actors together, series XI and XII of Red Dwarf will be filmed back to back this autumn to be broadcast on UKTV's Dave channel in 2016 and 2017.

[Alex]

Being produced back to back, apparently:

Red Dwarf returns: Filming to begin on two new series - due to be aired on Dave from next year

UKTV asked for new series to be produced back in 2012

The Emmy Award winning sci-fi comedy Red Dwarf is to return - series XI and XII are due to be broadcast on Dave in 2016 and 2017, with filming beginning later next year. The show’s reprisal will see the four haphazard space explorers - Craig Charles (Lister), Chris Barrie (Rimmer), Danny John-Jules (Cat) and Robert Llewellyn (Kryten) - join forces once more as they continue their galactic adventures.

Charles will be leaving his ten-year stint on Coronation Street to take part in the revival. According to Digital Spy, he said: “I have had an absolutely fantastic ten years on Coronation Street and I will be very sad to leave. Lloyd has become a huge part of my life and I have made some amazing friends with whom I will always keep in touch.

The trio return in 2016 "But I feel I owe it to my colleagues on Red Dwarf to join them in filming the new series and finding out what is in store for Lister and the others. I would love to return to Coronation Street at some point in the future.“

The two new series will be produced back to back, with shooting scheduled to begin later this year. Red Dwarf XI and XII are written and directed by Doug Naylor, who regrets that the new series took so long to become a reality. He suggested that UKTV asked for new series to be produced back in 2012. "Frustratingly it's taken until now to get our ducks in a row and all the boys available at the same time. Now they are, we're all absolutely delighted, ”he said.

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-en...-10220863.html

I'm glad it's back as I've a tremendous amount of good will to the series, even if only about half of the last batch worked for me. I kind of wish it wasn't Naylor writing it all though, having Grant back, or bringing in some fresh new talent or established comedy writers would have made me more optimistic.

I wouldn't have any issues if they were to bring it to an end either. Or some kind of an ending, so that even if they do renew it for further seasons, it would go off in a different direction (and be ignored if rubbish, perhaps).

On a side note, a new tv comedy show which is very Red Dwarf-ish is available on Yahoo at the moment called Other Space - https://screen.yahoo.com/episode-1-g...070100400.html which is created by Paul Feig who's behind the upcoming Ghostbusters reboot. It's about a small crew who are trapped in a different dimension and unlikely to see earth again, and so slightly Voyager-ish too, and whilst it's nothing special right now, it's not too bad and has made me laugh a few times. And it's a lot lot better than that pilot for the US remake of Red Dwarf at least.

[Dino]

I was trying to find the thread we had for Red Dwarf as well to tell everyone!
Something to look forward to over the next few years. The last series they did for Dave was actually quite good.

[Richard Brinck-Johnsen]

Currently on tapatalk so can't merge this with the existing thread. (See The Return of The Return of Red Dwarf).
There was a major issue with the second half of the series X scripts having to be written in a hurry because of filming dates being brought forward to accommodate at least one of the actors.
Hopefully, given they've known this was on the cards for several years (Doug spoke about a possible series XI during filming of X back in 2011), the scripts will have been completed before filming begins, especially as it was originally planned for last year but delayed due to Craig and Danny being unavailable.

[Dirk Gently]

Yay! My second fav sci fi series is coming back.

[Richard Brinck-Johnsen]

The duplicate thread regarding the two new series has now been merged with this one.

Rob Grant chose to cease any further involvement with the television show (although he did go on to write his alternative version of the third novel "Backwards" published in 1996) over twenty years ago. The last time Doug Naylor experimented with new writers resulted in the somewhat mixed bag that was series VII so I think we just have to accept that it's going to happen and we may as well try and enjoy it for what it is. Strange to think that by the time series XII hits our screens it will be almost thirty years since the first series was broadcast!

[SiHart]

This is great news. I'm very pleased. The last season was a little patchy, but on the whole was great fun. Hoping for some good episodes.

[Paul Clement]

I know it won't happen, but I'm in agreement with Alex when he says he would like to see Rob Grant back. Although I still enjoy Red Dwarf, it was far better written when he was involved. His novelization of Backwards was also far far superior to Doug's appalling Last Human.

[Alex]

Managed to get two tickets to a recording in December which I'm excited about. Has anyone been to one before? I'm guessing we'll have to get there quite early to guarantee we get in as they always tend to over subscribe tickets for these sort of things. Still, even if it means queueing in the rain for a couple of hours I'm sure it'll be worth it!

[Richard Brinck-Johnsen]

They don't make you queue up and they won't turn you away (unless possibly if you arrive late after the recording has started). There's an indoor waiting area. Once you arrive at Shepperton (I assume it's still there) you follow the signs and there will be desks where you get ticked off on a register and given stickers with numbers. You then get called through to the main studio hangar in groups.... I assume unless the budget has increased exponentially it'll be a similar set up to the 2011 recordings.

[Alex]

Oh cool, thanks for all the info there, it's greatly appreciated.

[Alex]

I went to the recording last night (for what I think is episode 4, but I'm not quite sure), and really enjoyed it. Have to keep this spoiler free due to Doug's wishes, but I thought it was one of the strongest episodes in a long long old time, and wasn't reliant on catchphrases or any kind of lazy fan service. It's got a nice plot that I haven't seen them done before (at least on this scale), and I don't know, I had low expectations but came out really pleasantly surprised. It had the feel of the early series (S3 and S4 particularly) being largely ship based and centering around the main four characters.

The whole thing took a bloody long time to record though, we were seated by about 6pm but it didn't start 7pm, and then went on till 10pm, which according to a member of studio staff was the earliest finish time yet. And there was a lot of prerecorded material so god knows what time we'd have been let out if it had all been studio based. There were a huge amount of screw up's too but the reactions from the rest of the cast made it all part of the fun, though if you weren't a fan of the show then I could see why you might struggle with how long it took, and I was definitely glad when it finally ended.

The warm up man was Ray Peacock, who did a fine enough job, with one running joke about an audience member wanting to lick Craig Charles having a great pay-off, (and thanks to Peacock some audience members have a piece of popcorn that was used in the opening scene, one of which is now on ebay - http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/GENUINE-RE...gAAOSwfZ1WYhIV - it's not me though, I'm keeping mine for prosperity!) and most of the cast came out to interact with the audience from time to time.

The only downside is the size of the sets, and the amount of camera's used, meant we couldn't see the actors some of the time, and hardly anyone could see the scenes set in the Starbug. We were in the front row though and maybe those higher up had a better vantage point.

Anyhow, yeah, I'm pretty optimistic about the new series now, especially given the other set reports on various Dwarf fan sites.

[Rob McCow]

Sounds great. I watched the documentary on the making of the last Dave series and I'm astonished anyone agreed to go through it again!

I presume they had screens or something, so that you could see what was going on even when the cast were out of view?

[Alex]

Sounds great. I watched the documentary on the making of the last Dave series and I'm astonished anyone agreed to go through it again!

I presume they had screens or something, so that you could see what was going on even when the cast were out of view?

I'd not heard about the documentary, was the making of it that bad an experience then?

And yeah, there were a fair few screens dotted around so we could watch it as it was being filmed, along with the vt clips as well.

[Rob McCow]

The Documentary is excellent. In short - they had a hard time finding the money, getting the cast back together, etc; some of the episodes didn't work and had to be massively re-written with half the scenes added at a pick-up recording; Craig Charles got very ill; then they had to re-film all the effects because the first company that tried it were excruciatingly bad; but worst of all they very nearly lost all the hard drives with the rushes on them.

I'm sure there was more!

[Alex]

The Documentary is excellent. In short - they had a hard time finding the money, getting the cast back together, etc; some of the episodes didn't work and had to be massively re-written with half the scenes added at a pick-up recording; Craig Charles got very ill; then they had to re-film all the effects because the first company that tried it were excruciatingly bad; but worst of all they very nearly lost all the hard drives with the rushes on them.

I'm sure there was more!

Oh wow, I didn't know anything about that, sounds fascinating / bleak, and I'll definitely watch it soon now.

[Si Hunt]

They did a scene on location and half the frames didn't come out. So they had to re-mount it and do it again but the same thing happened. So they cobbled the scene together with half the bits from one take and half from the other (or something).

Si.

[Stuart Wallis]

Cobbling this part, cobbling that; it's amazing the amount of hard workers that are around in TV these days...

[Dirk Gently]

Cobblers!!

[Dino]

https://youtu.be/pw2RVj-d5G8

New trailer! Looks like more happens this series. Although the last one was good!

[Rob McCow]

Well there was a good laugh in the trailer - and it all looks very exciting too. I'd love for this to be bang on form and as enjoyable as ever, here's hoping!

[Alex]

The first episode is now online (legally) here: http://uktvplay.uktv.co.uk/shows/red...=5121443193001

I have to confess to being a bit disappointed, the first half was really slow and I didn't find myself laughing at all, though the second half was better and had a few decent jokes. I thought they used Kyrten as an exposition device way too much, and I don't know, it just lacked something.

The episode I saw being recorded is the fourth in the season, and was more character based rather than concept, so I hope more of the series is along those lines.

[Richard Brinck-Johnsen]

I'm glad it wasn't just me that felt that despite some good ideas the whole episode just lacked something and in general just sat between not been quite funny enough and not convincing with the storytelling.
I'd almost rather they'd dropped the studio audience and went back to the series VII style film look if it's still going to look this cheap and unconvincing. For all its faults, at least I didn't find myself losing suspension of disbelief during Back to Earth.
All that being said, very pleased to see the Model Unit back for this series after the problems they had trying to do the models "in house" for RDX.

[Alex]

I'm really pleased to say I enjoyed the second episode a lot more than the first, lots of fun character interaction and jokes which worked, there was the odd dodgy moment and it was all wrapped up a bit quickly, but overall it made me laugh a fair bit and felt like "Proper Dwarf", whatever that means!

[Rob McCow]

I thought they were both brilliant. As I think I've said before, at this stage in the game I'd be happy with a couple of decent laughs per episode. This new series has totally surpassed that.

While personally I thought Twentica was funnier (perhaps it was just my mood at the time!) Samsara managed the Red Dwarf trick of balancing comedy, tragedy, horror and sci-fi in the space of 30 minutes. The actual plot was as thin as the cast look back in Red Dwarf I; they go to the spaceship, Cat and Lister get trapped, Kryten and Rimmer work out what's going on and then they leave. But you also get the comi-tragic back story, great interplay between the regulars and the creepy spaceship full of corpses. Then again, you could argue that it's built around the two scenes of Lister and Rimmer playing Mine-opoly and Cat and Lister discussing inventions.

I agree the ending was a bit quick and I would have liked a scene of the crew deliberately being immoral and insulting each other to get off the ship (like the end of Psi-Moon in reverse???) In some ways it felt like re-treading old ground, even mentioning Justice World. I thought it might be something like the Luck Virus causing the problems. But it didn't matter, it felt really fresh and exciting. The writing was efficient and hilarious and the cast are sublime.

Here's to the next 30 years! (Smeg.)