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Welcome back to the Anglotopia podcast, the weekly podcast where we discuss everything related to British culture, history, and travel. This week we have a special guest with us, author Tom Salinsky, who has written a brilliant new book about the classic British sci-fi comedy, Red Dwarf. So today we're going to talk about Red Dwarf and British TV, which is one of my favorite topics. Red Dwarf came about during an interesting time for British TV, and its backstory is a great look at the development of 80s British sci-fi and comedy at the BBC.
the perfect topic for a podcast. Tom is a writer, podcaster, and corporate coach living in London with his wife and too many cats. Welcome, Tom and your cat.
Thank you for having me, yes, and my cat toast is very keen to be on the podcast, so she's on my lap at the moment, making it very clear that it's my sworn duty to love her and worship her. And if I dare break off to do anything else, then she will have words.
Sounds about right, right? Yeah. So, well, let's let's dive right. right in then. What's your Red Dwarf story? Tell us about the journey that led to writing this book and what inspired you to take on the monumental task of cataloging every episode of Red Dwarf for this book?
Well, you call it a monumental task, but actually it started with an even more monumental task. It started with American science fiction rather than British. It started with Star Trek. I'd been doing a personal project to watch slash rewatch all of Star Trek. I figured out that if you start with the original series and watch one episode a day, you can get all the way to the end of Enterprise, after which it went off the air for a long time, in about two years.
Now, there seems a little point doing that if you aren't going to laboriously catalog it all. And so that became a blog, and the blog became a book. So that was out last year, and then talking to the same publisher as they basically said, what else have you got? So then I started to... thinking about Red Dwarf. And there have been a few books about Red Dwarf, but mainly covering just the first six series. Now, this book ended up being split in two.
So actually the first volume also only covers the first six series. But there is more to come. If you want to find out about the later shows on Digital Channel Dave or indeed other apocryphor like the, yes, there was one, aborted American remake. And then also things like role-playing games and abandoned episodes and TV advertisements and things like that.
Love it. And I'm going to have to pick up your Star Trek book. I'm a huge Star Trek fan. I've seen every episode of Star Trek about a dozen times. So it's, I even did my own rewatch a few years ago where I started at the beginning and went all the way to the end. So it's quite rewarding. It is. What's interesting is when I did it a few years ago, I hadn't actually watched Star Trek all the way through since the 90s when, you know, and peaked Star Trek.
And so it was really, it was a really interesting time capsule to experience it all again. But back to Red Dwarf. We're not here to talk about Star Trek. So I was, you know, when I was reading the introduction to your book, there's a really interesting backstory to how Red Dwarf ended up on TV. So what's the story there? But I'll give me too many spoilers from the book.
Sure, sure. The BBC had a deep-seated suspicion of science fiction. So the writers, Rob Grant and Doug Naylor, were building their careers on shows like spitting image and other kind of sketch and comedy shows like that. But they had this idea for doing a science fiction sitcom and the BBC hated the idea. So for a while, it was never going to get made. There was a little quirk of accounting. It was normal practice if you got a sitcom that they just give you another go the following year, unless it was absolutely terrible.
And British sitcoms to come in packages of six episodes to a season, which I think is also connected to the fact that the tradition in British television comedy is of the single lone genius writer instead of the enormous army of comedy minds sitting around a table or working on scripts, which is the norm in America. And there are various reasons for that. A very prolific comedy writer called Ben Elton, who was part of the alternative comedy boom of the 1980s, also worked on shows like Blackadder, and the young ones had done rather an ambitious series in Manchester called Happy Families, which was basically a riff on the old Ealing comedy, Kind Hearts and Coronets.
I don't know if that's something that Anglotopia has covered in the past. Simple sort of thing. So instead of Alec Guinness, it was Jennifer Saunders playing a different role in each episode. And it was a serial. So there was never any intention of doing a second. series. But nevertheless, the BBC accounting just carried on as normal. And lo and behold, there was an entry in the following year's budget, Happy Families Series 2, a show that was never going to exist.
But suddenly there was this little pocket of money available for the producer of that show to do something else. And he'd been working with Rob and Doug. And so he called them up and said, we might be able to do this in Manchester. And that's kind of, there are other stones in the road, but that's basically how it snuck past the BBC's deep, deep, deep suspicion of anything, even vaguely science fiction flavored.
Fascinating stuff. So how did the idea come about? Doing a sci-fi show, set on a spaceship, like, how did that, I mean, who came up with that idea?
Well, the other kind of tradition in BBC sitcoms, Well, British sitcoms of the era, is the two men who hate each other but can't get away from each other set up. Yeah. So you have, for example, porridge, which was set in a prison starring Ronnie Barker. He and his cellmate. You have Steptoe and Son, which I think was remade in America as Sanford and son. But same basic idea. Father and Son, rag and bone men who can't stand each other, but the economics of their situation forced them to stay together and so on and so on.
So that was the germ of the idea in terms of the traditional sitcom shape, but Rob and Doug were science fiction fans, and they were particularly inspired by the film Dark Star, which was a student film project for Dan O'Bannon and John Carpenter, both who went on to much greater things. One little detail about that, I think this is in the book, is that they made this student film about this spaceship going around blowing up suns and this.
absurd alien and this bomb with an interest in philosophy. And then a distributor came along and said, guys, this is brilliant. I think I can get it into real movie theaters, but you have to add an extra 30 minutes. And then I ended up with, I think it was what John Carpenter described. It said, instead of going from the world's most impressive student film, we ended up with the world's least impressive professional film. There's a kind of grungy atmosphere.
O'Bahn went on to apply that also to Alien, which he made in the late 70s. And, you know, that kind of truckers in space aesthetic. So they were also thinking about doing a more working class style of comedy than was traditional at the BBC. And so that was where all these ideas came together. They wanted characters who were at the bottom of the totem pole. They wanted them isolated and they wanted to do something with science fiction.
So that's where, from where sprung the idea of, okay, let's make it the last human alive. There's been an accident. He's been kept in stasis for three million years. and then the person most likely to keep him sane is the person who spent most of his time with who is also his exact opposite. But they're both, they're both losers in their own way. And then to round out the cast, a loopy computer and a character who evolved from Lister's pet cat, because why not?
I know, and I just love how the absurdity kind of just all clicks into place, and then it creates TV magic. Absolutely. Now, when Red Dwarf premiered, was it a massive hit right away, or was it a slow burn?
It wasn't a massive hit. The first episode got decent ratings, and I think there was some interest in this new show or whatever it was. And it just sort of ticked along. But it started to gather a fan base, and the commissioning editor at BBC Manchester recalls seeing a young man on a train wearing a Red Dwarf t-shirt sometime during the first series going out. And he realized that this must have been somebody who'd made it himself because there was no official those dice.
That suggested a certain amount of grassroots interest. And then it's not entirely clear how this happened because the first series went out in February 1988 and the second series went out the end of the same calendar year, which is very fast. And my researchers weren't able to uncover why this was. So it could be that an outgoing commissioner wanted to give it a chance or possibly an outgoing Commissioner wanted to throw his successor under the bus by committing another million plus pounds to an obvious turkey.
Or it could have been another accounting error. Who knows? So they're able to get 12 episodes done in less than 12 months, which is a lot. And that's where it began to start gathering some momentum.
So now, correct me if I'm wrong. This is the, is this the dark period when Doctor Who was not on the TV anymore?
Just coming to the end, yeah. So Red Dwarf started in 88 and then Doctor Who went off the air in 89. So there's just like a two-year overlap. And then we go into the wilderness years.
So then that's that, like you're right, that's the kind of the BBC's attitude towards sci-fi. We don't want this. Yeah. So since it was a moderate success, so then how did Red Dwarf sort of influence the British TV landscape in the 80s, particularly with sci-fi?
I'm not sure it did. I think the BBC's, objection to science fiction continued it. Because also in about 86, I think, there'd been an attempt to do a cop drama in space called Star Cops, which got very good reviews and had a terrific cast, but wasn't renewed for a second series. Again, I think it was just too expensive. I think the BBC's attitude was that drama is about people talking to other people, and that if you have to add spaceships and aliens and robots and so, one, all it does is add to the cost without necessarily adding to the human interest.
So Red Dwarf just kind of became its own thing. It was almost like they, okay, there is an audience for science fiction comedy. That box is ticked by Red Dwarf. Good. Okay, now we can move on and make another series of Bergerac or Munger or whatever we choose to do.
Yeah. So in those first couple seasons and then from all of your research while you were writing this. Can you share some fun behind the scenes, mishaps, or moments that fans may not know about?
I mean, a lot of this has been quite extensively covered. So I'm trying to think, what's the most obscure thing I found out? Let me have a little thing. Do you actually, this isn't really an answer to your question, but just as a point of interest, the thing that actually took me the longest to find out, which you will not find anywhere other than in this book, is the original ratings for those first two series. Because there were a couple of magazines and newspapers that would regularly publish top tens.
Red Dwarf was not usually in the top 10, even for BBC 2, during most of that time, but I eventually got access to the BBC written archive in Reading, where they have neatly bound copies of original paper reports from the ratings agency to the BBC, which I was able to pour through and find Red Dwarf ratings. So that is a little, little I dotted or a little T crossed for the aficionado. You will not find that in any other reference work.
Yeah, there's all sorts of stuff there. Actually, that's the other thing I found that. I have a pile of papers relating to series two, only series two, I don't know why. But one of things I found in there was a draft copy of the script for the season two close a parallel universe. And I don't know how well versed you are in Red Dwarf, Jonathan, but quite a lot of the episodes have one big high concept driving it.
And Parallel Universe is the one where in an attempt to get back home using Holly's Holly Hop Drive, which is a genuinely dreadful prop. I mean, really, it's like school play level. But anyway, they find themselves in a world where the sexes are reversed, a matriarchal society. But they find another red dwarf and they find female versions of themselves. So that's an interesting casting challenge apart from anything else, having to find actors who could play all those same familiar characters, one of whom Hattie Hayridge playing Holly the computer, then took over the part from the original actor Norman Lovett for the third series and onwards because he decided than what to do anymore.
But the way this plays out on TV is that we don't know who's on board to the other Red Dwarf until we board and the door opens and then you have Dave Lister looking at what is Lister's other Lister's first name? I can't remember. And Arnold Rimmer looking at Arlene Rimmer and you see the alter egos for the first time. In the original draft script, there's a several scenes of the alternative Red Dwarf first making contact. So we've seen all that before the crew has seen it.
and I can't understand why they did that. They want to get us familiar with this new version of the world, but it's so much better holding that back and keeping it as a surprise.
Yeah, I have seen Red Dwarf. It is one of my favorites, so it's, but it's been a while. Yes. So, I mean, being the seasons are rather short, it's not like a monumental challenge, but what challenges did you face while re-watching this and then analyzing every version of the show from broadcast to the remaster? I believe you watch the DVDs, you watch the commentaries, and all that. So you watch every episode several times for this.
Yeah, that's right, yes, yes. So with the Star Trek watched through, because there were over 700 I had to get through, it really was just watching each episode once, write down some thoughts about it, and that's going to have to do. And then just, you know, for the book, tidying up the prose a bit. But yeah, for this one, I wanted to go through it more detail. So in particular, the very first episode, they shot, and then edited and then realized that it could be improved.
And then they had a pickup week where they were going to do some extra bits and pieces. And they ended up doing quite a heavy rewrite on that first episode and re-recording quite large chunks of it. But on one of the DVDs, there is a version from that first recording only. And then, as you say, there was also an attempt to remaster them in the 90s, not wildly successful. and the remaster versions are actually harder to come by now than the original versions.
And there are various commentaries and so on. So, yes, with that first episode in particular, I think I watched the broadcast version, the broadcast version with the cast commentary, the remastered version, the remastered version with producers commentary, the original version and the original version with writer's commentary. So I think I know that episode pretty well by now.
much. The DVD also has a Japanese dub, but I wasn't sure that that would teach me anything new.
Well, you never know. Like, I was watching a video the other day about how in Japan for the TV show, King of the Hill, there's a debate over which version of the show is better for them to watch. It's the Japanese version with the Japanese dub voices or the English version with Japanese subtitles because the voices are different than the characters. So like it creates almost two different shows.
I'm reminded of the story that the comedian who used to be known as Eddie Izzard now, Suzy Izzard, but this is somebody who's very English comedian, very ambitious. So one of the things he wanted to do was perform in different languages. So he taught himself French initially. I'm saying he, because that's how he identified when this story took place. He taught himself French in order to go and perform in France, and his shows went very, very well, but the one thing that they didn't respond to at all was his impersonation of Sean Connery.
And it was eventually pointed out to him that in France, almost all American films are dubbed, and they have no idea what Sean Connery sounds like.
I love it. So Red Dwarf has a bit of a cult following I know among Anglophiles, and it almost didn't get made, you know, based on the story you told us. Why do you think the show resonated so strongly with and grew that cult following despite its kind of initial, not, it wasn't, you know, a runaway hit?
I mean, I think both comedy and science fiction tend to grow their own subcultures, science fiction especially. But around this time, this is kind of kind of the tail end of this, but this alternative comedy boom in Britain had really changed the way that comedy was seen on TV. And it created this tribalism. So the alternative comedians, Rik Mayall, Adrian Edmondson, French and Saunders, people like that, were creating a new way of doing a comedy that was setting itself apart from the comedy of my parents' generation.
And so that tribalism, I think, was one of the things that really helped. So Red Dwarf has a bit of a foot in the camp of some of the oldest, of comedy, but because it has this science fiction setting, it feels very fresh, and then that brings on the science fiction fans as well, who are starved of homegrown science fiction on television, because as you say, Doctor Who's going off the air, it's already been cut to 14 episodes a year.
We used to get 26, but from 1986 onwards, we've only got 14. So there just isn't very much out there, and that hunger, I think, means that people find it, and they love it, and then it's theirs. and it's the thing that we understand and you don't. And that's what creates these subcultures.
Yeah, I've been in, I've been deep in these subcultures, especially at fan conventions in the U.S., where, you know, you'll be in a room full of people who can quote every line in every episode. These are my people. And I think that what's fun about these quirky sci-fi shows is because genre lends itself to those micro-fandums. Um, yeah. So, uh, kind of on that track, how do you, like, I'm really, one of the surprising things about Red Dwarf is that it's still actively being made, even, you know, over 30 years later.
Um, uh, now, how do you think sort of Red Dwarf compares to other long running British sitcoms, not necessarily sci-fi in terms of its longevity and impact? Does it still have an impact or is it just still that weird show that's on, on the Dave channel on preview, you know.
Yeah, it doesn't have quite the same cultural cachet on Dave. But that having been said, I think especially when it came back for those first full season. So there was a three-part special event thing in, I think, 2009, back to Earth, which is generally seen as not being very successful. But then they just kind of went back to doing it the way they'd been doing it at the BBC, a series of six episodes, recorded in front of a live studio audience.
and 30 minutes long. And Dave went to town to really try and publicize that. And it was quite a big deal. And the ratings for a digital channel were pretty spectacular. So I think it proved there was an audience out there. And maybe it did better because it was a little bit of original programming from Dave that was basically a channel that existed to do reruns of old comedies. And I think that meant they really wanted to get behind it, whereas if it had been on a slightly apathetic BBC, they maybe wouldn't have pushed it quite so hard.
But even since then, the whole landscape's changed. I don't know about you, Jonathan. I don't watch broadcast TV anymore. Even when I'm watching the BBC, I'm watching IPlayer. Everything I watch is on streaming services at my leisure. So the whole model of broadcast TV and you have to be in when it's on or you miss it, which was still a thing in 2009. For me, at least, isn't a thing at all anymore. For me, it's all just a jukebox where I pick what I want to watch when I want to watch it.
Well, and we're the same way. We pay for Hulu live so we can get live news and that's it. Like, we don't, I can't think of the last time we watched a TV show live when it aired. It's just not something we do. I have my own Plex server, so I just have my own queue of things that we're going to watch when we want to watch them and it's my own private TV channel, you know, and has a very large, Library of British TV.
All acquired legally.
And I'm reminded that so Red Dwarf is still going on Dave, and now it's called you and Dave for some reason. They had this weird rebrand. And they also tried to bring back another 80s comedy. Yes, Minister. They brought back Yes, Prime Minister for a short series, and that wasn't a hit. No.
But key difference. Because the yes, Prime Minister reboot was off the back of a moderately successful play version. Yeah. With some very good people in it, including Henry Goodman as Sir Humphrey, who's a wonderful actor. But I think when you go and see like a play version of something, you'll be a bit more tolerant of, oh, this isn't the actors I'm used to. Like, there's a production of Back to the Future in the West End at the moment.
And no one's going to go and see that expecting to see Christopher Lloyd and Michael J. Fox.
But when those same replacement. actors pop up on TV and it's all shot the way the old yes prime minister was, it really matters that it isn't Nigel Hawthorne and Paul Eddington. Yeah, it didn't really gel. There's just no getting away from that was one of the extraordinary things about Red Dwarf is certainly in terms of cast, how stable it's been. So Robert Llewellyn joined the cast with the beginning of series three. Everyone else in that core quartet has been with the show since the very beginning.
So although it has developed and it looks very different to the way it looked in 1988, and it's maybe got a bit more sophisticated in some ways in terms of the storytelling, but it's remained very, very consistent, whereas you look at a lot of other really long-running shows and either haven't developed at all, like my family, which has spat out hundreds of episodes, but I think they all pretty much look the same. I'm not a devotee of my family.
I think I've seen two episodes out of the 300 or so that they've made. So they tend to make incredibly static. We've got the formula which going to keep doing it. Or like Last of the Summer Wine, which is the other really long-running British sitcom I can think of, the cast keeps changing in small part with that one because it's a story of three old men. And if you begin with that, you will have to replace the cast at some point.
Yeah. And after a while, you don't even notice that they've been replaced. So changing track a little bit. So you have written a lot about Star Trek, and like I said, I've got to get this book. How does the humor and storytelling that Red Dwarf differ from more traditional sci-fi like Star Trek? Because Star Trek is famously almost humorless. Yes. Yes. Unless you're watching Deep Space 9.
Yeah, it has a sort of, yes, solemnity, almost pomposity. Yeah. And one of the thing is that Red Dwarf. exists to do, I think, is to pop that pompous bubble, which is what's so fun about it. One of the things that Rob and Doug said they were trying to avoid was making Red Dwarf Star Trek with jokes. And certainly what I found on my rewatch is the very best episodes, the ones I really responded to, tended to, tended to be the ones which really dug into the characters and who they were, sometimes in science fiction inflected ways.
I think Polymorph is a really key episode from, I think, the third series, where they meet a creature that feeds on emotions and sucks a specific emotion out of each of the characters. Say we get to see the cat without his vanity. We get to see Rimmer without his anger. We get to see Lister without his fear and so on. And that's just a great way of digging into who these characters really are. But you can't do it on my family or Parks and Rec.
you know, it can't be done. You have to have the science fiction world in order to allow something as crazy as that to take place. But if you were doing that on Star Trek, it would all be about the physical calamity, which had befallen the crew. So a very bad, quite fun, but quite bad episode from Next Generation's seventh season. I think it's called Genesis, where all the crews start mutating. Oh, God. So it's the same basic idea.
But it's uninterested in who these people are and only interested in how much latex Michael Westmore can bring to bear.
Yeah, I usually skip that one on a rewatch at this point. It's interesting you to say that because like some of the best episodes of Star Trek are the bottle episodes where they don't leave the ship and it's just all plot and a character interaction. And Red Dwarf is kind of almost a large majority a bottle show. Yeah. They rarely leave the ship because of the the budget constraints. And so it makes the stories more creative and it makes the focus on the characters.
Yeah.
The episodes of Red Dwarf I tend to like less are the ones where it's the gang visit the planet of the fill in the blanks. And the trap there for Red Dwarf in particular is that it tends to genericize the characters because all the emphasis is on how interesting or funny the planet of the Blanks is. But the secret source for Red Dwarf is that these are four such incredible characters. And anything which allows us to see new sides of them, I think is what's really going to pay off.
So quite a popular episode with many people, but not with me, is backwards from the beginning of series three. And one of the things I don't like about that is it all just feels like all the humor is coming from things going backwards and almost none of it is coming from our regular characters. Even to the point of Rimmer and Kryten end up making money. in this backwards world as the incredible reverse brothers because they can drink a glass of water forwards and the population of this planet find that incredible.
But why isn't Rimmer screwing this up? He screws up everything else. Why is he suddenly finding success? So it's a less interesting version of Rimmer and therefore a less interesting episode for me.
Well, and talking about character there, and you kind of touched on this at the beginning, but what do you think makes these characters like Rimmer unless they're so beloved by fans even after all these years. Is it that they kind of took the traditional pomposity of shows like this focusing on the captains and commanders and focusing on people in the lower decks, so to speak?
That definitely helps. And especially after I've been running a little while, that alchemy, which happens in really good sitcoms, started to take place where the writers become influenced by what the actors are doing, the actors get more comfortable with characters and can push what's on the page a little bit more and that kind of blending starts to take place because Ray Galton and Alan Simpson who wrote the steptoe and son and wrote a lot for Tony Hancock impressed on the writers, they were sort of mentoring them a little bit, impressed on then the importance of hiring really good actors because they said, you know, the jokes will be on the page.
What you want is really good actors who can sell the truth of the relationships. And then they ended up with a static comedian, an impressionist, a dancer and a performance poet. But it was the chemistry. The chemistry was right. And in particular between Lister and Rimmer, whose relationship is at the heart of the show. And I think what makes it work is you have two losers. One's a happy loser who likes himself, who's content with his lot.
And one is a frustrated loser who hates himself. And that's a really interesting dynamic. And that he's still paying off years later, 70 episodes later, you still see that paying off in the special that was out a few years ago.
Well, yeah, and that makes the character is timeless. And they, you know, that makes some, you know, even if you ignore the low budget sci-finess of it, the show could have been written today. I mean, it, you know. So with more new Red Dwarf episodes confirmed for next year, what are your hopes and expectations for what's to come?
So, first of all, I'd say that there's quite a lot of weight on that word confirmed. Lots of rumours are circling. Some of them are coming from the cast, but I haven't heard anything that I would call confirmed yet. All sorts of things could happen. It seems as if the intention is there and the willingness is there, whether that will actually result in more episodes remains to be seen. I was actually really pleased with that last 90-minute special.
I thought it was a really nice blend of nostalgia. I remember this show and how good it used to be, doing something new with the characters, going back into the show's history. And so I would be delighted for them to have another go at that. The last full series, I think, for me, the needle just tipped a little bit too far into nostalgia and fan servicing, which is, you know, it's always fun while it happens. but you can't gain new fans that way.
But I have a hunt that someone who had never seen Red Dwarf before could have watched the promised land and still got a lot out of it because there's almost nothing you need to know about the setup that isn't explained on screen.
So, as we said to the beginning, this is the first volume in this book. So are you already writing the next volume? When can we expect that to come out?
Yeah, no, it's all done. So basically what happened was I pitched the book to the publishers. They liked it. wrote it. And then they said, can you cut 40% out? And I said no. And then for a while there was an impasse. And that was resolved when they said, how about doing it in two volumes? Nice. So it's all written. So the only thing that might change is if between now and the final proofing stage, new episodes of Red Dwarf air, then I will try and include those.
But at the moment, the book ends with, so, because the other thing that happened, apart from COVID and lockdown, was the writers were suing each other.
Yeah, so everything kind of ground to a halt. The writers had split after the first six series, and so it was all up to Doug Naylor to write and, in fact, direct the later episodes. But Rob Grant still had an interest in the show, was still a shareholder in the company. They held the rights. And then, for various reasons, a dispute merged. And so just as I was finishing the book, news came that the two men had resolved their differences and the court case was over.
I hadn't reached court. It was just, you know, lawyer sending each other. I've read them increasingly demented mehows back and forth. Jarned dice versus Jarned dice, right? Yes, absolutely. absolute fiducii, such as whether the design of Kryten's mask is a thing which could be said to hold intellectual property, you know, copyright or not. I mean, just insane stuff. But so the book ends with, it looks as if there might be more Red Dwarf in the future.
And while that means that this volume won't remain definitive for very much longer, I'm absolutely delighted by the news.
So Red Dwarf aside, I don't know if you can talk about it. So what are you working on next? What show are you going to dissect next?
That hasn't been decided for the moment. I'm not working on any new books about this. I've got a play coming to the King's Head in Islington in Spring of Next Year, which is a historical look at three big beasts of the Labour Party. So three men, Tony Crosland, Roy Jenkins and Denis Healey, any of whom could have been leader of the Labour Party in practice, none of whom was. And it sort of asked the question, well, what might have happened if they'd be able to set aside their personal differences?
And one of them had become a leader.
That sounds interesting. To ticks my boxes. I love British politics. So based on your sort of knowledge of British TV in shows like Red Dwarf, why do you think it has such international appeal? Because, like I said, I know there has a cool following here in the U.S., with Red Dwarf, what do you think it makes British TV appeal worldwide?
I mean, because Americans, I don't know if you're aware of this, Jonathan. America is particularly adept at exporting its own culture.
And it's done it in such a way that we sort of imagine that the American take on things is the default. So Americans also, again, I'm not sure if you're aware of this, Jonathan, tend not to be particularly good at learning. other languages. To be fair, this is also a problem that we have in Britain. The problem is English is the world's second language. So wherever we go, they've already learned English. We don't have to bother.
So why that is we won't get into.
So there are going to be amazing comedy and drama and reality and other things, you know, amazing shows made in Finland and Iceland and Saudi Arabia and Bangladesh and so on. But you're never going to see any of them on. American screens because if a company is interested in them, they'll just buy the rights and do an American version. But with other English-speaking countries, with Australia, UK, New Zealand, Canada, that problem doesn't arise. But also, Britain, I think, is particularly good at repackaging its own culture and exporting it.
So I think one brilliant example of this, a show that was beloved in America, and you can see the budget leap. when the American money turns up, is the Avengers, which was made through the 1960s, but he's really, certainly as far as John Steed is concerned, really he's an Edwardian adventurer. You know, this is not a, Emma Peel is a bit more swinging 60s, but it's a world of, it's virtually P. G. Wodehouse, you know, it's a world of everyone being incredibly proper and having elegant cups of tea and wearing beautiful three-piece suits and so on.
And so that kind of packaging of Englishness, I think, is very appealing. So I think in, whereas an American, where is Star Trek in Britain is science fiction, Red Dwarf in America, I think, is British science fiction and British comedy. And it's the Britishness, which to us is normal, that has the appeal, whereas nobody watches Star Trek because it's America. because American stuff is everywhere.
Absolutely not. Nor would we wish to. Nor would we wish to. So many wonderful things have come out of America.
Speaking of American remakes, now, from what I understand, they attempted to remake Red Dwarf for America. Please tell me how that went.
Not well. Some of the right ingredients were present. It was an early go show running by a man called Linwood Boomer, who would go on to create Malcolm in the middle. This show is not Malcolm in the middle. No. And so the Rimmer was offered to Chris Barrie, but he didn't take it. Kryten was offered to Robert Llewellyn, and he did take it. And then everyone else was recast. But even though the original writers were flown over to L.A.
to work on it, they never saw I-2-I with Linwood Boomer, and he had. all the power because he was the studio's pick. You can see various versions of this floating around the internet. But crucially, they don't understand how the Lister-Rimmer relationship is supposed to work, and nor do they put anything newer or more interesting in its place. Like the American version of the office, which was such a phenomenon, ran for so long, and was this, as I understand it, this, you know, unbeatable ratings, Leviathan.
got good when it stopped trying to copy the British office.
When it just took the premise and allowed the characters to be themselves. And I remember there's a moment, I think, in the second season of the American office, where it looks as if Michael Scott has completely blown this deal by taking this guy to Chili's and making crass jokes. But actually, he gets the deal. Something that would never have happened in the British version. the British character could never be allowed to win. David Brent would never be allowed to win.
I can't remember if this is in the book or not, but somebody pointed out to me once that as general trends go, a typical episode of an American sitcom begins with a problem and ends with a resolution.
But a typical episode of a British sitcom begins with an aspiration and ends with dashed. hopes.
Yes, or a worse problem. And actually, it's interesting that there's one very popular American sitcom, which does tend to hue to the British model more often than not. And that's Frasier.
Yeah. Yeah, you're right. And that's one of the best comedies of the 90s is Frasier. And even the new one kind of still follows the same format, and it's very popular. Yeah.
Oh, is it? I know it's come back for a second series, but people are watching it and liking it, are they?
Yeah, I mean, it's on Peacock, which is like the 10th ranking streaming service. So, like, success is relative. Sure. But, I mean, enough people are watching it that they spent more money on another season. So, you know, can't be.
I thought the first season was fine. It didn't defend me, but it's nothing like as good as the original show at its peak.
That's interesting. You picked that model of British comedy. Yes, Minister and yes Prime Minister follow that perfectly. Yes. Every episode is. is the minister or the prime minister wanting to solve a problem? And by the end, usually, the exceptions are even funnier when it doesn't happen. Usually, it's Humphrey stopping the thing from ever happening. But the episodes, do they turn the tables on Humphrey are my favorite.
And that's, that's Jeeves and Wooster as well. It's, it's, uh, it's, uh, uh, Jeeves getting Bertie Wooster out of scrapes by humiliating him maximally. Uh, but all you can do is say thank you because he has got out of the scrape. Uh, similarly. uh, with Sir Humphrey, he manages to solve, uh, the minister's problem, but, uh, at the cost of his, the thing he actually wanted to do being taken away from him forever.
Well, and, and you can't get two better people than Hugh Laurie and, and, uh, and Stephen Fry going back and forth. Yeah. Jeeves and Wooster is always at the top of my list for people. He'd be like, like, watch that. That's great. Yes. Um, so for my last question, and this sort of a fun, freeform answer, for fans of of shows like Red Dwarf and other cult classics like that. What are some other British companies they might like to watch?
Oh, um, I rewatched Bottom recently. Uh, and, uh, I remember when it first came on thinking, oh, this is like the young ones, but not as good. And I missed the, the wild surrealism of the young ones. Um, watching them both again, I think Bottom has dated better. Uh, young ones is so ambitious, but the, the limits of what you can achieve in a television studio in 1982 are vastly apparent throughout, whereas bottom is much more self-contained as it's largely.
In fact, several episodes are just two men in a flat. And it has this kind of existential angst running through it. Actually, similarly to, a similar sub-theme in Red Dwarf, Lister is the last human alone in the universe. And in bottom, Rik Mayall's character is destined to to die a lonely virgin. But that kind of, that kind of pain of existence is just this little extra theme, a little kind of base note running along underneath. And then at top of that, you have brilliant comedy performances from some great guest stars, extraordinary physical violence, and some very, very funny lines.
So that's definitely worth revisiting. And actually, they did, I think, five live shows, which certainly the first two, are tremendous. And again, it's, it's just two actors on stage now for an hour and a half with an interval. But they, they recorded one performance of each of those, and those are all available on DVD as well. And, yeah, there is something very special about seeing, seeing two really top-class comedians, but we're also great friends, just enjoying being on stage with each other in front of an audience.
Yeah, and when those casts align like that, like I guess I've talked, we already talked about Yes Minister ad nauseum, but like with Yes Minister, I mean, it's, literally the perfect cast for the perfect time. Red Dwarf, perfect cast. And really, the appeal is you just want to see these people interacting with each other. Yeah. It saw the actual story. Yes. So any other shows you recommend to classical classics?
What else leaps to mind? I mean, how obscure do you want me to go? More or obscure, the better.
I don't know how good it is. I've got vague memories of a Channel 4 sitcom called it. a worried man. Never heard of that one. Written by and starring Peter Tilbury. And the gag I remember enjoying most in that is the psychiatrist, played by Nicholas Le Prevost. He's a lovely actor. And the running gag was that Peter Tilbury would come in and start trying to explain his problems to the psychiatrists who'd say, oh, I know, it's awful, isn't it?
And then start, they use the rest of the session to tell his patient all about his problems.
Interesting. I've not heard of that one. So, yeah, I'm discovering new things.
There's a channel for a sitcom again from the 80s sometime. Alrighty. Oh, what about Chance in a Million? What's Chance in a Million? I've not heard of that one either, so please tell me more. All right. So, I mean, this was an early, early outing for, how about this for a cast, Simon Callow and Brenda Blethyn.
Simon Callow plays Tom Chance. It's one of these sort of things, I don't know if American sitcoms had the same. same thing, but these kind of quirky names where the name kind of informs some aspect of what they do for living or their personality. But this is just a brilliant bit of comedy invention. Tom Chance is a man whose life is plagued by coincidence. Isn't that delicious? So all the things you'd think, oh, the audience isn't going to swallow that, it's too contrived, we'll never get away with it, is baked into the format.
He's a man whose life is plagued by coincidence. and Brenda Blethyn is his girlfriend. And it's just, it's just, it's tons of fun. Same writers went on to do the British Empire with Chris Barrie.
I'm going to have to find that one. Yeah. So, all right, well, the book is Red Dwarf, Discovery in a TV series, Volume 1. It's out now from booksellers everywhere, and we'll put a link in the show notes. Thank you so much for talking with us, Tom. It's been a lovely chat about British TV.
