News Round-Up

Catching up with all things Dwarf...

1 March, 2013

Since reddwarf.co.uk launched in 2000, there has only been two years - 2009 and 2012 - in which new episodes of the show have been on air. As such, long-time readers of the site will know that just because there isn't a brand new series to talk about at any given time, it doesn't mean things aren't active in Red Dwarf land. Hot off the heels of our Silver Anniversary celebrations, then, here's a whistle-stop tour of what various people in and around the show are up to at the moment...

As we reported last week, Robert Llewellyn and Danny John-Jules are probably the most active of the gang at the moment. Robert will be signing copies of his memoir The Man In The Rubber Mask at London's Forbidden Planet Megastore tomorrow (2nd March), while his newest sci-fi novel News From The Squares has just smashed through its fundraising target on crowdfunding publisher Unbound, and so will be published later in the year.

Danny, meanwhile, can be seen on Celebrity Pointless this Saturday evening - and has also just released a Kindle eBook and DVD telling the story of his Mad in the Med biking adventure from back in 2010. This is in addition to his Comic Relief biking exploits, which will be taking place at Brands Hatch circuit on 10th March.

And if you haven't had your fill of cast members' pet projects, then don't forget to check out Craig Charles' Funk and Soul album and Norman Lovett's stand-up DVD, Outside the Box, which has just been made available as a convenient - and very reasonably-priced - download option courtesy of Go Faster Stripe. Those in London can also catch Hattie Hayridge performing standup at a small gig in Piccadilly on Tuesday 5th March.

If you want to keep an eye on Red Dwarf's more recent alumni, meanwhile, then be sure to catch the final episode of ITV1's Mr Selfridge, this Sunday 3rd March at 9pm on ITV1. In this final episode of the series, you'll find Howard Rimmer himself, Mark Dexter, playing the legendary explorer Ernest Shackleton. This follows on from Mark's (rather unpleasant!) role in the first episode of another Sunday night hit, Ripper Street - which can still be caught up with on the BBC iPlayer.

We should also give a tip of the hat to RDX script editor and one-time website overlord Andrew Ellard, who has announced that his first movie, a horror script titled AfterDeath, began shooting this month! We'll be keeping an eye out for it...

With Red Dwarf's Silver Anniversary in the air, a number of popular sites chose to mark the occasion in various ways. Digital Spy gave a list of their top five episodes, unsurprisingly including Back to Reality and Gunmen of the Apocalypse alongside the slightly more eyebrow-raising - but no less laudable - choices of Camille and Emohawk. The British Comedy Guide, meanwhile, explored the show's place in the wider context of British sci-fi and fantasy-based comedy.

Assorted fan sites were also able to get in on the celebratory act, showing signs of an increasingly burgeoning online community of chatty and creative Dwarfers in the wake of Series X. Long-time stalwarts Ganymede & Titan took the opportunity to conduct the first major, wide-scale fan poll since the fan club magazine Better Than Life in 1999. Hundreds of fans ranked all 61 episodes (yes, they counted Back to Earth as three parts) in order, with the resulting poll unsurprisingly seeing the ever-conquering Back to Reality take the top spot, ahead of Marooned and Gunmen.

The number of Red Dwarf-related podcasts available has increased dramatically in recent months, too. In addition to the longer-running Dwarfcasts and Scuttercasts, a fascinating project called The Red Dwarf Introcast has recently emerged, in which two American fans who've never watched the series before work their way through episode-by-episode - with two experienced UK-based Dwarfers on hand for guidance. It's an approach that offers a truly fresh perspective decades after the episodes were first aired. Speaking of which, another podcast series - The Garbage Podcast - is marking the show's birthday by publishing commentaries on each episode of Series I on the actual anniversary of each date they first aired.

The sheer volume of discussion material surrounding Red Dwarf at the moment is therefore as high as it's ever been - something that bodes well for the upcoming Dimension Jump event this spring. We hear from the fan club that sales of weekend passes are now approaching the event's full capacity - so if you've been holding off on signing up, now's the time to get in there!

Back to the series itself, and it was heartening to see that the recent anniversary repeat marathon on Dave pulled up decent trees in the ratings. The most-viewed episode, intriguingly the Saturday early evening showing of The Inquisitor, made it into the channel's top ten of the week - an arena that's usually the province of QI and Mock the Week repeats. That is, of course, when there isn't new Dwarf battering everything in sight!

Finally, those who pay attention to goings-on on the British high street will no doubt have noticed news of the sad decline of entertainment chain HMV, who are presently in administration. As stores around the country close down one by one, and their website is currently unavailable for orders, it's worth noting that if you want to get your hands on the HMV-exclusive Red Dwarf X steelbook DVD set, you probably haven't got long left to try and track one down in the remaining stores...

Keep up with Red Dwarf news every Friday morning here at reddwarf.co.uk!