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Season 9, Episode 4 - "The Making of Back to Earth"

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12 April, 2009

A look behind the scenes of the "Red Dwarf: Back to Earth" production.

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Premiere: 15 February 1989

Type: TV Show

Genres/Tags: Sci Fi, Comedy

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It was created and originally written by Grant Naylor (a so-called 'gestalt entity', in reality a collective pseudonym for the writing duo Rob Grant and Doug Naylor). The show had its origins in a recurring sketch, Dave Hollins: Space Cadet, in the mid-1980s BBC Radio 4 comedy show Son of Cliche, also scripted by Grant and Naylor. In addition to the Red Dwarf television series, there have also been four bestselling novels, a pilot episode for an American version of the show, and a significant number of tie-in books, magazines and other merchandise.

Despite the pastiche of science fiction used as a backdrop, Red Dwarf is primarily a character driven comedy, with many off-the-wall science fiction elements used as complementary plot devices. For example, in the early series, a recurring source of comedy was the "odd couple" relationship between Dave Lister and Arnold Rimmer, the two central characters of the show, who have an intense dislike for each other but are trapped together in an isolated deep space scenario.

Red Dwarf's highest accolade came in 1994, when an episode from the sixth series (Gunmen of the Apocalypse) won an International Emmy Award in the Popular Arts category. The show also won Best BBC Comedy series at the British Comedy Awards during the same year, and attracted its highest ratings of over eight million viewers by the eighth series in 1999. In a 2004 BBC poll to find Britain's best sitcom the show was voted 18th out of 100 nominations.

The current status of the show remains uncertain, as Doug Naylor (now in sole control of the franchise following the departure of Rob Grant in 1995) is committed to writing and producing a feature film version of the sitcom. Naylor has also stated that he hopes one day to tie up the cliffhanger upon which the eighth series ended, perhaps with a one-off, feature-length television special although a ninth series has not been ruled out, depending on the success of the feature film.

In August 2008, Robert Llewellyn appeared on Seattle public television station, KCTS 9. In an interview, he revealed that BBC Worldwide, in collaboration with another party, had invested in one hour of new Red Dwarf to be filmed in early 2009. Grant Naylor Productions announced that it had been "on the cards" since February 2008. It subsequently transpired that UKTV channel Dave will screen four new 30-minute specials to celebrate the twenty-first anniversary of the show. The new episodes form part of an effort by Dave to screen more original programming, instead of just repeats.

It was subsequently announced in January 2009 that the new special was to be a brand new two-part story titled Red Dwarf: Back to Earth, broadcast over the Easter weekend of that year along with a "making of" documentary and a one-off entitled Red Dwarf: Unplugged. On 20 February 2009, it was announced that Red Dwarf: Back to Earth would now be a three part special and that the unplugged episode had been postponed. Unplugged had been described by Craig Charles as "just the four of us - and some chairs - trying to improvise, or rather trying to remember, classic scenes".

Plot-wise, lead-actor, Chris Barrie was reported as saying, Yes, Lister's dream is about to come true. But like everything in Red Dwarf, nothing is straightforward. The specials mark a decade since the cult series ended.

Back to Earth itself will not be filmed in front of a studio audience in an effort to help keep the plot a secret. Although this will not be the first time this has happened (for instance, series 7 was filmed entirely without a live audience), it will be the first time a laughter track is not added for broadcast. The specials will be broadcast over four nights starting on Friday, April 10th 2009. It will then be released on DVD on 15 June 2009.

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