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Rob Grant, creator of Red Dwarf, has died
- solomonb 8mo agoWow 2 in one day with Dan Simmons :( Rest in peace.
- mrwh 8mo agoIt's cold outside There's no kind of atmosphere I'm all alone More or less Let me fly Far away from here Fun fun fun In the sun sun sun I want to lie Shipwrecked and comatose Drinking fresh Mango juice Goldfish shoals Nibbling at my toes Fun fun fun In the sun sun sun Fun fun fun In the sun sun sun
- zabzonk 8mo agoOne of my favourite happy happy songs. > Shipwrecked and comatose is how I have often felt.
- thebruce87m 8mo agoThat would look good on a headstone.
- danielodievich 8mo agoAs fresh immigrant to USA, watching it on local PBS on the gigantic back projection jumbotron TV someone offloaded on us back in mid-90es, it made a huge impact with its absurdity and silliness. I sing "Drinking Fresh Mango Juice" every time I get it out of the fridge, and when my wife and I visited Egypt and got room service with fresh mango juices, it was in heavy rotation. And every time I leave and it's cold outside, I tend to sing "It's cold outside!". RIP
- nephihaha 8mo agoFor a brief period there it was fashionable to have fish nibbling at your feet (in the 2010s?). Not goldfish shoals although that is probably what Lister wanted to farm in Fiji.
- mrwh 8mo agoIf Fiji was under water by then, wasn't his plan to give the sheep snorkels? There's a hazy memory from 30 years ago.
- FireBeyond 8mo ago"Right you arr, Farmer Lister!"
- agumonkey 8mo agoI loved the piano chord progression.. and then there's tongue tied https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a3t3IKlXqFU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a3t3IKlXqFU (great bassline too)
- alephnerd 8mo agoI'll pour out a lager and grab some chicken vindaloo in his memory.
- cryptonector 8mo agoOf course! Lager, the only thing that can kill a vindaloo.
- busterarm 8mo agoSmeg
- jl6 8mo agoDamn. Guess I’ll be smoking some kippers in his memory. Can we get a black bar? On second thoughts, that would mean changing the CSS.
- tarkin2 8mo agoAh, there are so many jokes like that which still make me smile. I'm grateful Red Dwarf and his books were part of my childhood.
- melody_calling 8mo ago> On second thoughts, that would mean changing the CSS. Bravo.
- cryptonector 8mo agoDammit Kriten, I want the black bar.
- moffers 8mo agoThey’re all dead, Dave! What a great franchise.
- hinkley 8mo agoPeterson isn't, is he?
- petermcneeley 8mo agoRIP with the calculators.
- stevekemp 8mo agoSilicon heaven .. hopefully free of talking-toasters.
- arprocter 8mo agoNot now, not ever. No toast.
- cryptonector 8mo agoOr crumpets.
- ColinEberhardt 8mo agoMy random claim to fame; I was the support act (juggler) for Norman Lovett (the red dwarf ships computer), for one night only in the Welsh town of Bangor. What a life I’ve lived.
- nephihaha 8mo agoYes, I remember him. He briefly had his own show called "I Lovett" or something like that. Also spent time in Bangor back in the mid nineties.
- kinlan 8mo agoI still spend time in Bangor
- ColinEberhardt 8mo agoOne drunken night in the company of Norman Lovett was enough for me :-)
- FireBeyond 8mo agoSpeaking of which I remember Chris Barrie (who played Rimmer) lamenting some of the filming of Red Dwarf and how he struggled to and gave up on hanging out with Craig Charles (Lister) and Danny John-Jules (Cat) because he'd be tired and ready for bed and they'd just be getting started. And then they'd show up sometimes straight from the clubs to shooting the next morning, or sometimes drunk still, or hungover.
- thebruce87m 8mo agoThat was probably fine for portraying Listers character to be fair.
- gerdesj 8mo agoCraig Charles nicked my lighter in Oscar's nightclub in Plymouth in roughly 1991. I wouldn't have minded but it was my Dad's Zippo (RAOC, 7th/11th Armoured Brigade). He asked for a light, wandered off with it and then vanished, whilst I was distracted ahem.
- bravoetch 8mo agoI used to stay up late to watch Red Dwarf. [dark reference to the show incoming] Maybe he's moved on to somewhere Better Than Life.
- nullhole 8mo agoRIP, thanks for the memories. No sci fi effect has ever given me the same sense of wonder that I got from the shot of the camera slowly travelling over the gigantic ship in the Season 1/2 intro. Btw: @dang : Grant was the co-creator, alongside Doug Naylor, who is still kicking
- nephihaha 8mo agoThe intro was actually strangely eerie/bleak. I felt sorry for Lister (I think it is) out there painting the ship. There was kind of a sadness because he had lost pretty much all his friends and you could feel the vastness of space.
- teamonkey 8mo agoThe practical effects in the early seasons were truly fantastic. It was never quite the same after they switched to cgi.
- nephihaha 8mo agoI've said elsewhere on the "Babylon 5" discussion that Kubrick's "2001" has aged better in many ways than Hyams' "2010" which came out many years later. In the same vein, CGI has a nasty habit of aging more quickly than practical effects. There is stuff from the nineties which looks worse than the seventies as a result. In the case of "Red Dwarf", the genius was in having the ship be an ugly industrial environment in the vein of "Dark Star", "Alien", "Outland" etc. That allowed for sets to be built easily and cheaply. I think some of it was even filmed in a BBC canteen/cafeteria.
- thx4allthefish 8mo agoSmeeeeeeeeg head
- ddellacosta 8mo agoAs an American, Red Dwarf along with Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy created a deep appreciation both for British humor and funny sci-fi in my adolescent self. I now own the box set on DVD and even have a random Red Dwarf novel I got at a yard sale (I forget which one of them wrote it though). RIP Rob! Will be having a vindaloo, lager, and maybe some fish (Fish! Fish! Fish!) later in your honor (EDIT: 100% talking about the UK version here, had no idea or forgot there _was_ an American version)
- afandian 8mo agoMaybe it was written by: > Grant Naylor is a gestalt entity occupying two bodies, one of which lives in north London, the other in south London. The product of a horribly botched genetic-engineering experiment, which took place in Manchester in the late fifties, they try to eke out two existences with only one mind. They attended the same school and the same university, but, for tax reasons, have completely different wives. > The first body is called Rob Grant, the second Doug Naylor. Among other things, they spent three years in the mid-eighties as head writers of Spitting Image; wrote Radio Four's award-winning series Son of Cliche; penned the lyrics to a number one single; and created and wrote Red Dwarf for BBC television. > They have made a living variously by being ice-cream salesmen, shoe-shop assistants and by attempting to sell dodgy life-assurance policies to close friends. They also spent almost two years on the night shift loading paper into computer printers at a mail-order factory in Ardwick. They can still taste the cheese 'n' onion toasties. > Their favourite colour is orange.
- ddellacosta 8mo agoHaha I went and actually looked and yep, that's it...no wonder I couldn't remember
- afandian 8mo agoSomehow enough fragments of that stayed in my brain since 2004 to google it. My first and last real-life encounter with the word 'gestalt'.
- hermitcrab 8mo agoKryton is one of the greatest characters to ever grace a tv screen.
- Lio 8mo ago“It’s a banana. It always has been a banana and always will be a banana. It’s a yellow fruit you unzip and eat the white bits. It’s a banana!“
- LeoPanthera 8mo agoRobert Llewellyn is just a lovely person in general. He now produces a YouTube/TV show about electric cars, but his outtakes from Red Dwarf are delightful. He stays mostly in character during the outtakes (perhaps that's easy in the suit) and he's very funny. Some random Red Dwarf outtakes: https://youtu.be/l6VTzq5N0Mo https://youtu.be/l6VTzq5N0Mo
- hermitcrab 8mo agoNot seen that. Thanks! Ps/ Which episode was Kryton wearing the red tellytubby suit in? I don't think I've seen it.
- nephihaha 8mo agoIt terrifies me sometimes that I can see aspects of both Lister and Rimmer in myself despite them being polar opposites. I don't relate to Cat as much, although his character is great too.
- codeulike 8mo agoLoved the show back in its heyday. From what I remember, the novels are pretty good too
- dwb 8mo agoFab show, great memories! Thanks for the laughs Rob, RIP.
- JojoFatsani 8mo agoThere was nothing like Red Dwarf on TF (British or American) back then - a laugh-tracked show that could be simultaneously the most hilarious dry wit, not-so-dry bawdy humor, and a compelling and thought-provoking sci-fi action-adventure all at the same time. I fell off it after they had that comeback season roughly in 2000 where the whole ship got revived. Then I saw a few clips from a later season where everyone was pretty schlubby. I'll need to track down some way to re-watch the whole thing.
- nephihaha 8mo agoI watched the whole lot thanks to lockdown. I used to like up until series six or so, but had a look at the later ones. Yes, the actors certainly all look more "lived in" nowadays. The later series/seasons are very uneven, which surprised me. I stopped watching originally around when Chloe Annette's Kochanski was introduced but I was surprised that instead of a steady decline that the quality was very up and down.
- jeffwask 8mo agoI rewatch it a lot and the only season I skip is 9. There are a couple bad later episodes I'll skip but there are more than a few bangers in the later seasons.
- evanelias 8mo agoDitto here, season 9 ("Back to Earth") is the only one I have no desire to rewatch. Season 12 is particularly good though. In my opinion, the first and last episodes of that season are among the funniest they've ever done!
- misnome 8mo agoIIRC that was the one with the absurd "Photo Enhance" scene for which I think the episode more than justifies itself?
- KineticLensman 8mo ago
- hansjorg 8mo agoHe's dead Dave. At least he went peacefully in his Jeep.
- sbarre 8mo agoAnyone else read Rob Grant's book Colony[0]? It's a pretty funny sci-fi book, similar dry wit.. I picked it up at a yard sale only because it said "from the creator of Red Dwarf" even though I mostly only knew of the show through others.. 0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colony_(Grant_novel) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colony_(Grant_novel)
- itsoggy 8mo agoStoke me a Clipper... I'll be back for Christmas!
- lproven 8mo agoEr. I may be missing something here, but isn't it smoke me a kipper?
- FireBeyond 8mo agoYou are. It's Arnold's first attempt at being/becoming Ace. He stumbles over the phrase, and the "old" Ace tells him he was once like him too, and "there's an Ace inside you, too" (Lister/Cat, I can't remember which: "Yeah, so deep he's been buried..." or something to that effect).
- card_zero 8mo agoOh, piss.
- owenthejumper 8mo agoMy wife and I look at each other and laugh really hard every time we order Gazpacho. If you know, you know...
- mrlonglong 8mo agoMr Flibble sends his regrets.
- raffraffraff 8mo ago> Working together under the name "Grant Naylor", the creators of the series collaboratively wrote two novels. The first, Infinity Welcomes Careful Drivers, was published in November 1989, and it incorporates plot lines from several episodes of the show's first two series. The second novel, Better Than Life, followed in October 1990, and it is largely based on the second-series episode of the same name. Together, the two novels provide expanded backstory and development of the series' principal characters and themes. If you haven't read the books, please do yourself a favour. They are far far better than the series, have much more depth and have not dated as badly. I loved Red Dwarf when it was on TV (jesus, I was 12 years old..) but I find it a little hard to watch now. Some parts are still great though.
- gorgoiler 8mo agoAn excellent plan sir, with just two minor drawbacks… one: what you created was amazing and we will miss you; and two: you are dead. — after RG/DN