More Red Dwarf on Dave

[Tony Tony Tony]

https://www.comedy.co.uk/tv/red-dwarf-first-3-million-years/

Looks like it could be Dave milking the Red Dwarf franchise somewhat with 'unseen' clips though the sections where the cast sit round and reminisce will give Mrs TTT the opportunity to say her fave phrase of 'hasn't he got old'.

[The Mollusk]

I was worried it was going to be another fucking series when I saw the thread title. Still I guess this will be pleasant, and Craig Charles' ego could definitely use a bit more inflation eh!

[DrGreggles]

No Norman? The best thing about old RD chat is him moaning about everything.

[thr0b]

THEY TOOK HIS BALL AWAY.

[JamesTC]

It is a documentary made by the same team behind the Only Gools docs made by UK Gold a few years ago.

[frajer]

I'll watch this and I'm sure it will be enjoyable enough, but not sure much will be said that fans don't already know. The double-edged sword of the Beeb DVDs being fucking resplendent in terms of indepth extras. Still, nice to see it being celebrated.

[Utter Shit]

I caught a bit of the newest proper episode last night. Did they deliberately age Kryten as a joke, or is it just Robert Llewellyn's advancing years (is that a word?) pushing through the mask? I was genuinely more surprised at how different Kryten looked compared to the heyday of Red Dwarf than any of the rest of them.

[Rolf Lundgren]

Quite excited by this as I love the chemistry between them and would happily watch the four of them sitting around yakking.

I'll watch this and I'm sure it will be enjoyable enough, but not sure much will be said that fans don't already know. The double-edged sword of the Beeb DVDs being fucking resplendent in terms of indepth extras. Still, nice to see it being celebrated.

I'm still gutted that the Dave era DVDs don't have commentaries on them. The BBC ones are fantastic and seems like a big oversight to not do any for these series.

[Elderly Sumo Prophecy]

I can't bear to watch any of the new ones on Dave on Freeview because the picture quality is so dreadful. Too many channels squeezed onto a system that can't cope with it.

As for age, Chris Barrie and Robert Llewellyn are now in their 60's. Danny John Jules is 60 this year. That's pretty mental.

[Lisa Jesusandmarychain]

Even Hattie Hayridge is 60. Time, eh?

[thr0b]

The lack of commentaries is probably largely down to how quickly the DVD/Blu-Rays are on the shelves. From production to screen seems to be around six months or less with the last few series, and the discs have been in the shops by the time the final episode is broadcast. Even if they had time or money to do the commentaries, they'd probably not have enough hindsight to find much to chat about.

The documentaries are still produced, and arguably cover much the same ground. "We're Smegged" is a tremendous, er, documentary of a production which had so many problems it's amazing Red Dwarf 10 aired at all.

[frajer]

"We're Smegged" is a tremendous, er, documentary of a production which had so many problems it's amazing Red Dwarf 10 aired at all.

It really is a belter but jesus yeah, did Dave even see it before it was put out? Not that all the problems lay with them by any stretch. Still can't get over Doug delaying writing the scripts for... reasons.

[thr0b]

The best thing that happened to the show since Rob Grant left is Baby Cow coming on board. Clearly freed Doug Naylor up more to concentrate on the writing rather than everything else as well.

[frajer]

Definitely agree about Baby Cow helping steer the ship in the right direction. Also leads to a wonderfully strange and lovely moment on the Series 11 blu-ray documentary when the camera happens upon Steve Coogan chatting to someone on-set... and pans right past him to interview the set designer instead. You've got no comedic currency aboard the Dwarf, Steve! :-)

Might be misremembering but didn't Doug Naylor also choose to delay writing the scripts because he felt there was no point until all four main cast were confirmed as being available to shoot. And then once they were confirmed, he suddenly had to write 3 or 4 scripts in a kick-bollock-scramble period of just weeks?

[M-CORP]

If memory serves from the doc he was told by the producer, the late Charles Armitage, not to write the scripts in case one of the four actors couldn't be signed on, in which case the series wouldn't happen. I think it was originally on the understanding that the production schedule could slide six weeks, but the slide was then lost when it transpired that Craig Charles, the last cast member to be signed, was needed back in Coronation Street quite soon after filming wrapped (The February after I believe).

It didn't help that originally UKTV and Armitage were both unsure about having a studio audience (they wanted the big cinematic feel of the previous Back To Earth special, whereas Doug wanted the audience and felt both fans and cast wanted it too). This meant it wasn't included in the initial budget, and some location manager was organised to go out and find locations that would look good on screen and that Doug could write for. Then Doug was told he now had an audience... at the expense of two weeks of OB filming. So now he couldn't use any of the locations that were consequently flooding the scripts he'd already written.

Worth noting that Armitage conceded in the documentary that the studio audience, despite causing various budget problems, was the biggest success story of series X.

[frajer]

Ah, thank you.

I rated Series 10 as decent when it aired, but after seeing the We're Smegged documentary I was flabbergasted it ended up being anywhere near as good as it did. It seems remarkable that the episodes even exist.

[Brundle-Fly]

Did Naylor and Grant ever reconcile?

[thr0b]

I'm still quite surprised that Craig Charles ultimately quit Corrie, in favour of sporadic episodes of Red Dwarf and his radio/club stuff.

[thr0b]

Did Naylor and Grant ever reconcile?

I don't believe they ever fell out as such, they just didn't want to work together anymore. They did finish off a storyboard for an uncompleted episodes on the Bodysnatcher DVD set.

[Brundle-Fly]

I'm still quite surprised that Craig Charles ultimately quit Corrie, in favour of sporadic episodes of Red Dwarf and his radio/club stuff.

It's quite a grueling schedule doing the soaps so I imagine Charles felt financially comfortable enough to knock Corrie on the head and get his life back. As commented in this thread, they're not getting any younger.

[Brundle-Fly]

I don't believe they ever fell out as such, they just didn't want to work together anymore. They did finish off a storyboard for an uncompleted episodes on the Bodysnatcher DVD set.

I wonder what percentage Rob Grant receives since he stopped co-writing or did he just sell up his half of the franchise?

[thr0b]

He's still  a director of the production company, so I imagine he's making money from it without needing to do much.

Curiously, Doug Naylor isn't a director of the company, but Paul Jackson is.

[DrGreggles]

If you get a "created by" credit you still get paid.

[Malcy]

Saw an interview with Naylor the other day and he said that Dave want more and so do the cast. Also said that he preferred writing the feature length so that might be the format that they go with for future series.

[thr0b]

He's certainly better at the longer episodes. He still has great ideas, but has never been great at setting them up and giving them a satisfying resolution within the 30 minutes or so he's got. (He's still not perfect. The Cat's brother thing was pointless, added nothing and could've been dropped with no loss of anything.)

[frajer]

Great news. Was surprised how much I enjoyed The Promised Land. At times it felt more like a bag of ideas than a coherent plot, but for a 90-minute feature length ep it all hung together surprisingly well. Liked that the extended runtime gave a chance for quieter character moments, more of those please.

Yeah that bad guy being Cat's brother thing was weird. Didn't fully understand the gag around Cat being "younger" than him either. Was it a lampshade on the fact that between jaunts in Stasis, the Red Dwarf timeline makes little to no sense at this point? (not a criticism as it's always played fast and loose with continuity and I'd rather have good standalone eps than needless adherence to canon).

[Phil_A]

It's quite a grueling schedule doing the soaps so I imagine Charles felt financially comfortable enough to knock Corrie on the head and get his life back. As commented in this thread, they're not getting any younger.

I think it was partly personal reasons as well, his brother died suddenly which led to re-evaluating his priorities quite a bit

[Utter Shit]

Was the first episode of this any good?

[JamesTC]

Was the first episode of this any good?

Mostly it was just the same stories as told before on the earlier documentaries from the DVDs and there were only a couple of small things that were new (the highlight being a clip from Open Air with viewer praise for The End). They also zoomed in the 4:3 clips which made them look awful. Overall a good documentary for people who haven't seen any previous Dwarf documentaries.

[Malcy]

Mostly it was just the same stories as told before on the earlier documentaries from the DVDs and there were only a couple of small things that were new (the highlight being a clip from Open Air with viewer praise for The End). They also zoomed in the 4:3 clips which made them look awful. Overall a good documentary for people who haven't seen any previous Dwarf documentaries.

I wish they would just leave 4:3 pictures as they are instead of zooms or those fucking awful borders at either side that have blurred images of the video in the background.

Downloaded it this morning but might just wait and binge all 3. Not a hope in hell that I'm going to use the UKTV player to watch it.