Last week I discussed a show that was as simple and gimmick-free as a sitcom could be. This time we’re going right the other way and entering rather specialised territory, a science fiction comedy with quite the hook: its cast of characters features only a single human being, the last one left alive in the universe.

As you might imagine, the creators of the show faced an uphill struggle getting their creation onto the air. Among their challenges, they had to cope with cripplingly small budgets, industrial action, a bemused crew, and prejudiced TV bosses who couldn’t seem to get past that dreaded label: sci-fi.

But for those who could see beyond the genre, a great sitcom was waiting for them, one that really wasn’t about space at all.

Pre-Launch

Red Dwarf has its beginnings with a gestalt entity. (Yes, you read that correctly.) Rob Grant and Doug Naylor formed a writing partnership in the early 1980s and began contributing to some of the most famous comedy shows on British TV and radio (including Spitting Image, Jasper Carrott, and Cannon & Ball). By 1983, they’d graduated to having a show of their own, BBC Radio 4 sketch show Son of Cliché. The two writers referred to their ongoing collaboration as ‘Grant Naylor’, a being composed of the two men but greater than the sum of its parts.

Once Son of Cliché had enjoyed a couple of series, Grant Naylor felt ready to progress further and developed an idea for TV. They chose to adapt a running sketch from Son of Cliché called Dave Hollins: Space Cadet. Dave was an intergalactic trader marooned far from Earth and travels space dealing with hyper-intelligent computers, comical extra-terrestrials and interstellar corporations. (Eagle-eared listeners will recognise more than one gag that ended up being recycled.)

DAVE: My biggest problem is going space crazy though loneliness. The only thing that keeps me going is my collection of onions. I’ve decided to build an android in the image of woman, a perfectly functioning robot capable of abstract thought and independent decision-making… but I don’t know how. I don’t even know what to make nose out of.

Grant Naylor kept this basic premise for their sitcom, although the main character was renamed Dave Lister. Instead of a trader, he was now a low-ranking technician aboard the clapped out mining ship Red Dwarf. In the pilot episode, a radiation leak wipes out the entire crew, save for Lister, who is protected in suspended animation. He is revived once the radiation reaches safe levels – unfortunately that takes three million years, leaving poor Dave totally alone and marooned in deep space.

Not exactly a classic sitcom pitch, right?

In transforming a three-minute sketch into a half-hour weekly sitcom, the writers knew that much more change was needed too, chiefly an expanded cast. They kept the other recurring character from the sketch, the ship’s computer, but added two more. The first was Arnold Rimmer, a hologram of Lister’s former bunkmate, and a character called simply Cat, a humanoid descendant of Lister’s pet cat, the only other creature to survive the disaster.

In addition to crewmates, the writers also gave Lister something essential for a sitcom character: an ambition. The driving force for the series was Lister’s desire to get back to Earth and find out if he really is the last human being alive. Each episode portrays another sci-fi-oriented challenge he must overcome to get closer to home.

Grant Naylor took their idea to the BBC, where it’s fair to say Red Dwarf did not get a warm welcome.

I said [to Rob and Doug], ‘Guys, don’t write a sci-fi sitcom. Nobody ever buys sci-fi sitcoms. There are rules in this business and one of them is, “don’t do sci-fi sitcoms.”‘

– Paul Jackson, BBC producer

In Doug Naylor’s opinion, the stodgy BBC top brass of the time were largely sci-fi illiterate and prejudiced against the genre. But Grant Naylor were stubborn. They knew that sci-fi was a growing market, evidenced by the amount of great stuff that had been recently released (Star Wars, Aliens, E.T., Ghostbusters, Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Back to the Future and so on). There was a sizeable, loyal audience for this kind of stuff and it wasn’t being well catered for by the Beeb.

Nonetheless, stubbornness alone wasn’t enough to guarantee success. The writers submitted their pitch three times to the BBC only to have it rejected on each occasion.

A Stroke of Luck

Paul Jackson, the producer who’d advised against this silly notion of a sci-fi sitcom, received a piece of news one day in 1986 that would have massive consequences for Grant Naylor.

The BBC at the time had several regional headquarters, each operating with a certain level of independence and producing their own roster of shows. One of these regions was based in Manchester. They told Jackson that one of their sitcoms was not being renewed for another series even though the budget had already been allocated. That meant there was spare money for six episodes of… something. Jackson (who liked Grant Naylor’s idea despite being doubtful of its prospects) sensed an opportunity.

He knew about the sense of rivalry among the different regions. The London branch was traditionally where the great BBC sitcoms got made. It also had something of a stuffy reputation. The Manchester branch was a comparative upstart, eager to be seen as edgy and dangerous. They wanted to challenge London’s dominance of sitcom, but were uninterested in doing anything safe or domestic, another sofa-bound Terry & June knock-off. It was a gamble, but if BBC Manchester were going to fail, they wanted to fail doing something risky and original. So, when Jackson suggested filling the spare slot with some sci-fi, it seemed just the ticket. Red Dwarf officially became a BBC Manchester production thanks to a stroke of luck and a canny producer with the nous to take advantage of it.

That luck seemed to stick with the show throughout pre-production, carrying it through continued challenges. Some senior BBC crew, eager to avoid having to work on this niche show made by weirdos in Manchester, were known to send their juniors instead. An electricians’ strike in 1987 almost sunk the show before filming had even begun. And Red Dwarf always seemed to be given short shrift by the BBC bigwigs, who treated Grant Naylor and the rest as outsiders.

Despite all that, the show arrived on British screens on Monday, 15th February 1988 with an episode entitled ‘The End’. It quickly built up a loyal audience and consistently appeared in the top 10 most watched shows on BBC2.

Flying High

In trying to figure out what contributed to Red Dwarf‘s warm reception, its timeliness is undoubtedly a factor. Grant Naylor knew that science fiction – under-represented and misunderstood among the BBC elite – had an audience out there in the 1980s. That audience wanted solid sci-fi plots, and Grant Naylor proved more than capable of serving them up, combining clever ideas and familiar tropes with comic slants: guilt-riddled robots, mutated viruses that personify one’s neuroses, faster-than-light travel that causes visions of the future, parallel dimensions where females are dominant, genetic manipulation that turns the hero into a chicken, and so on.

But Red Dwarf wasn’t just about the plots. Good science fiction comedy isn’t just about silly aliens with unpronounceable names living on weird planets. It’s about the same thing as serious science fiction or indeed any storytelling. It’s about people. Sci-fi is fundamentally about humanity but removed to the point that the audience can take an outsider’s view of it. Sci-fi comedy is the same thing but it chucks in some gags as well, making its points by making you laugh.

In fact, Red Dwarf wasn’t about alien monsters and fantastical planets at all, not least because the budget wouldn’t allow that. Remember, the original budget had been intended for a sitcom, enough to cover the cost of four actors, two sets, and a sofa. There just wasn’t the money to construct gelatinous extra-terrestrials and pink planets made of blancmange on a weekly basis. Grant Naylor turned that limitation to their advantage and set themselves some story rules when writing: no aliens, no monsters, no fantastical planets. Most of the show’s running time, particularly in its earlier series, takes place exclusively on the ship itself.

As well as being a great money-saver, it forced us to go somewhere original; instead of looking outward it forced us to look inward.

– Doug Naylor

By looking inward, they brought out the critical aspect of sitcom: character. In science fiction comedy, the humour works best when the joke comes not from the bizarre concept itself but from the characters’ reaction to the concept. Accidentally creating a hostile creature by manipulating the DNA in a plate of mutton vindaloo is good for a gag, but the real humour comes from how our regular cast react to it. When the characters are strong, we already know what each one will do before they even do it. When a threat rears its head, Lister, basically moral and decent, will try to reason with the threat and, if that fails, force himself to do the heroic thing. Cowardly craven Rimmer will immediately run away from it, perhaps offering to sacrifice his shipmates for good measure. The feline Cat will rear up in a show of force or, if the mood is going that way, try to have sex with it.

As well as the characters’ interaction to the plot device, there is the characters’ interaction with each other. In Red Dwarf, the heart of the comedy is the relationship between two men, Lister and Rimmer. Dave Lister is a slob, a lager-swilling bum who was formerly content to drift through space. Arnold Rimmer is an anally retentive, career-driven loser, obsessed with rank and order. They couldn’t be more different – and now they’re trapped together. Some of the best moments in Red Dwarf revolve around the pair of them bickering. In fact, one episode in particular called ‘Marooned’ revolves around nothing but their arguments. In that episode, Lister and Rimmer are stranded on a frozen moon and practically the whole episode is spent watching the two men talk to each other as they attempt to ward off cold and hunger. It features no important sci-fi elements at all and barely any screen time for other characters. Without strong characters, such an episode would fall flat, whereas its actually popular among fans. Chris Barrie, the man who portrays Rimmer, ranks ‘Marooned’ as his favourite episode.

It was the Lister-Rimmer relationship that sold Paul Jackson on the whole idea in the first place.

I loved it because it’s not a space sitcom. It’s The Odd Couple in space. It’s Porridge. It’s two men locked in a room together and they can’t get out.

– Paul Jackson

In a sense, I’m repeating what I said in the previous article about The Golden Girls. It’s hard to find two sitcoms more different, but via two very different routes we’ve arrived at the same conclusion: that the comic engine of a good sitcom is the characters and their relationships.