Red Dwarf is a British science fiction comedy programme created by Rob Grant and Doug Naylor that originally aired on BBC Two from 1988 to 1999, and was revived by Dave airing from 2009 to 2020. The programme follows low-ranking technician Dave Lister, who awakens after being in suspended animation for three million years to find that he is the last living human, and that he is alone on the mining spacecraft Red Dwarf—except for a hologram of his deceased bunkmate Arnold Rimmer and "Cat", a life form which evolved from Lister's pregnant cat. The cast included Chris Barrie as Rimmer, Craig Charles as Lister, Danny John-Jules as Cat, Robert Llewellyn as the sanitation droid Kryten, and Norman Lovett & Hattie Hayridge as the ship's computer, Holly. Twelve series of the show have aired (including one miniseries), in addition to a feature-length special The Promised Land. Four novels were published from 1989 to 1996. Two pilot episodes of an American version of the show were produced but never aired. The magazine The Red Dwarf Smegazine was published from 1992 to 1994. In 1994 an episode from the sixth series, "Gunmen of the Apocalypse", won an International Emmy Award in the Popular Arts category. In the same year, the series was also awarded Best BBC Comedy Series at the British Comedy Awards. The series attracted its highest ratings, of more than eight million viewers, during the eighth series, in 1999. The revived series on Dave had some of the highest ratings for non–Public Service Broadcasting commissions in the UK. Series XI was voted Best Returning TV Sitcom and Comedy of the Year for 2016 by readers for the British Comedy Guide. In a 2019 ranking by Empire, Red Dwarf came 80th on a list of the 100 best TV shows of all time.
Setting
The main setting of the series is the eponymous mining spaceship Red Dwarf. In the first episode an on-board radiation leak kills everyone except lowest-ranking technician Dave Lister, who is in suspended animation at the time, as punishment for smuggling a cat aboard the ship. The cat, Frankenstein, who is revealed to be pregnant, is safe in the cargo hold. Following the accident, the ship's computer Holly keeps Lister in stasis until the radiation levels return to normal—a process that takes three million years. Lister therefore emerges as the last human being in the universe—but not alone on board the ship. His former bunkmate and immediate superior Arnold Judas Rimmer (a character plagued by failure) is resurrected by Holly as a hologram to keep Lister sane. They are joined by a creature known only as Cat, apparently the last member of a race of humanoid felines that evolved in the ship's hold from Lister's pregnant cat during the three million years that Lister was in stasis. The series revolves around Lister being the last human alive, after three million years of travel from Earth, with his companions. The crew encounter phenomena such as time distortions, faster-than-light travel, mutant diseases and strange lifeforms (all evolved from Earth, because the series has no aliens) that had developed in the intervening millions of years. Despite the pastiche of science fiction used as a backdrop, Red Dwarf is primarily a character-driven comedy, with science fiction elements used as complementary plot devices. Especially in the early episodes, a recurring source of comedy was the Odd Couple-style relationship between the two central characters of the show, who have an intense dislike for each other yet are trapped together deep in space.
Later series In Series III, Holly is recast with Hattie Hayridge replacing Norman Lovett, and the mechanoid Kryten (who had appeared in one episode in Series II) joins the crew and becomes a regular character, played by Robert Llewellyn. Holly is not present in Series VI or the majority of Series VII as the show is set in the smaller Starbug craft, with Red Dwarf itself having been lost. Early in series VII, Rimmer departs, and is replaced by Kristine Kochanski, Lister's long-term love interest, from an alternate universe. Kochanski becomes a regular character for Series VII and VIII. At the end of Series VII and start of Series VIII, the crew are reunited with a reconstructed version of the original Red Dwarf, complete with the original crew, who have been resurrected, and Norman Lovett's Holly. The series ends with a metal-eating virus loose on Red Dwarf. The entire crew evacuate save the main cast (Lister, Rimmer, Cat, Kryten, and Kochanski), whose fates are unresolved in a cliffhanger ending. Series IX onwards revert to the same four main characters of Series 3–6 (Lister, Rimmer, Cat and Kryten), on Red Dwarf and without Kochanski or Holly; Rimmer reappears as a hologram once again. The exact identity of Rimmer is left vague; but series-creator Doug Naylor confirmed in 2020 that the Rimmer from Back To Earth onwards is the original Rimmer.
Characters and actors
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