Comedy Archeology - It’s Cold Outside

Let’s crack back on with a bit of excavating of the comedy influences. I’ve talked before about how big an influence upon me Douglas Adams’ brand of science fiction and comedy was. It wasn’t the only sci-fi comedy to have a formative and lasting impact though…

Red Dwarf
Arriving in 1988 and the brainchild of sketch writers Rob Grant and Doug Naylor, Red Dwarf (for those of you who haven’t come across it over the last 31 years) tells the story of Dave Lister, the last human being alive, stuck three million years in the future on the mining ship Red Dwarf with a hologram of his hated dead bunkmate, a being evolved from his stowaway pet cat, an increasingly deranged computer and, from series three onwards, a service mechanoid trying to break free of his programming. It wasn;t an overnight success but was fortunate enough to come along at a time when the BBC still had enough leeway to give a chance to shows that hadn’t found their audience yet.

Sci if comedy often struggles from leaning too hard one way or the other. It might be heavy on the comedy but too loose on the sci fi or full tilt on the sci fi at the expense of the comedy. Red Dwarf, for my part, manages to get the balance right. There are some genuinely decent sci if plots (and in fact one second series episode has pretty much the same plot as an episode of Star Trek The Next Generation which aired a few years later!) and the comedy does that important thing that has run through most of these posts so far - it gets the character dynamic spot on.

Lister and Rimmer have the classic antagonistic but co-dependent relationship that has been the backbone of many a sitcom beforehand and since. Nowhere does this become clearer than during season 7 which only features Rimmer in a few episodes as Chris Barrie had decided to leave the show and the quality very much suffers as a result. Bringing in a version of Lister’s long lost love Kochanski as a substitute doesn’t give the same feel. Fortunately for all, Chris Barrie decided to come back for the following series.

It’s also one of the few series where the tie-in media is just as worthwhile. Rob Grant and Doug Naylor wrote two books together (under the combined name of Grant Naylor) and a further book each separately following the dissolution of their writing partnership and all are fascinating remixes of existing concepts and plots from TV episodes. They offer a richness to the characters backstories as well as freeing them from the constraints of a BBC budget to allow them to tell the familiar stories in a newer and arguably more emotional way. If you can track down copies, definitely give those a read.

Red Dwarf is one of those rare beasts that is still going strong. It’s found a new lease of life on Dave in the last few years and, while not quite at the heights of the glory days, is far funnier than a thirty year old sitcom has any right to be. 

Speaking of thirty year old sitcoms, let’s have a look at one next time that, in the early days at least, was a true obsession…