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Red Dwarf is a British science fiction sitcom ("Britcom" in the U.S.), created and originally written by Rob Grant and Doug Naylor. It parodies most (if not all) of the sub-genres of science fiction but is first and formost an 'odd couple' type comedy. The first series aired on BBC2 in 1988. Seven further series have so far been produced, and a film is currently in production. The idea was originally developed from the 'Dave Hollins: Space Cadet' sketches introduced on Grant and Naylor's 1984 BBC Radio 4 show called "Son of Cliché".
In the show, the Red Dwarf is a gigantic spaceship, belonging to the Jupiter Mining Corporation, which, following an on-board radioactive disaster, is left to drift through deep space. Three million years later, after the radiation has dropped to a safe level, the only surviving crew member emerges from stasis and is surprised to face this grave reality.
This is the slob anti-hero David Lister (played by Craig Charles). He enjoys the company of a hologrammatic simulation of deceased crew member Arnold J. Rimmer (played by Chris Barrie), an anal-retentive and pretentiously annoying bigot.
Also accompanying Lister on his voyage back to Earth is The Cat (played by Danny John-Jules). The Cat is no ordinary cat, but a member of the species Felix sapiens, descended from a domestic cat which Lister had smuggled aboard three million years prior. While The Cat is humanoid, he retains a cat-like interest in fish, a heightened sense of smell, and grooming a uniquely feline fashion sense.
The other principal character is Holly, the ship's computer with a supposed IQ of 6000 (played, for the first two series, by Norman Lovett and later by Hattie Hayridge after Holly performed a 'head sex chance' upon himself). Holly runs most of Red Dwarf's systems despite now suffering from computer senility. Among Holly's sytems are the service droids known as 'Skutters' which clean, perform engineering tasks and function as Rimmers hands since he cannot touch anything non-holographic.
Later on, the crew are joined by the servile android Kryten (most famously played by Robert Llewellyn, but played by David Ross in his first episode) whom Lister encourages to break his programming and become a lying, cheating human like the rest of us!
Lister's longlasting crush is Christine Kochanski, played by C. P. Grogan. She was killed along with the rest of the crew in the first episode, and several subsequent episodes revolve around Lister attempting to bring her back, either through time travel or as a computer-generated simulation like Rimmer. In the seventh season, an alternate Kochanski from a parallel universe (played by Chloë Annett) joined the series as a regular character.
A pilot episode for an American version was produced for NBC in 1992, though never broadcast. The show followed essentially the same story as the original UK pilot, substituting American actors for the British; the one exception being Robert Llewellyn, who reprised his role as Kryten. The pilot was terribly unsuccesful since the American design was so bad. However, the comparison between the English and American shows is both interesting and hilarious: our anti-hero, slobby atheist Lister was replaced with a muscular hunk when he is translated for American TV. When Lister learns that three million years have passed in the UK show, he says "What about that library book?" In the American version he says "My baseball cards must be worth a fortune!" That's a good example of changes occuring in the international translation process.
The franchise has expanded to include four novels, written by the show's producers, Doug Naylor and Robert Grant (the first two together, as "Grant Naylor", and then one each separately).
Red Dwarf is famous for innovating the word 'smeg' in order to remove swearwords from the show and to add to a futuristic terminology. Some examples of the word in context are Smeg Head, Smeg Off, Smeg-for-brains and Smegging Hell. The idea of a substitute curseword was borrowed from the BBC sitcom 'Porridge' which brought the word 'Naff' into popular usage.
Grant and Naylor wrote the first six series together, before Grant left in 1996 leaving Naylor to write the next two with a series of new and less well-known writers including Paul 'S-Club 7 Movie / Thermoman' Jackson who wrote the only episodes of Red Dwarf that can be considered unwatchable.
A planned Red Dwarf: The Movie has been delayed from its original schedule. According to the official website is expected to be released in December 2003. And if you believe that prediction, you'll belive anything. Two words: Development Hell.