Happy Birthday Two You

Dwarf's original channel hits 50.

25 April, 2014

Ah, anniversaries. We like those. And there's another big one doing the rounds at the moment, with assorted celebrations of the fact that the channel BBC2 is currently celebrating fifty years of broadcasting.

Happy Birthday Two You

Of course, in this Dave-led era, it's perhaps easy to forget that BBC2 is the place where Red Dwarf made its home for the first decade-and-a-bit of its life (and excuse us for a moment while we realise that it's now been longer since it was off the channel than it was on it) - but as one of its biggest ever comedy hits (hitting record-busting ratings of over eight million back in 1999), the show has played a part in various retrospective celebrations that have gone on.

Now there has, admittedly, been a teeny bit of a farrago over the level of coverage the show initially received - it didn't help that the Telegraph newspaper managed to come up with a list of fifty memorable shows that somehow omitted Red Dwarf, which was met with immediate retort from several angry commenters - and it does strike us (as well as Robert Llewellyn) as a little bit odd that on a page full of classic BBC2 comedy clips, there was nothing relating to the small rouge one at the outset (and still isn't, at the time of writing). But we're assured by our Beeb chums that a Dwarf selection is on the way, and might well be by the time you visit the page.

And besides, as the last week has gone on, the show has entered the discussion more and more. There were actually three distinct clips featured in the main celebration show, the retrospective quiz All About TWO - which, if you missed, you can catch on the iPlayer until Tuesday 29th April. Meanwhile, both The Independent and Digital Spy have shown better taste than The Telegraph in compiling their lists of significant shows and milestones, and Dwarf is also putting up a good showing in the Radio Times reader poll.

Perhaps the best reminder of the Red Dwarf/BBC2 relationship, however, was the terrific set of idents created for the Red Dwarf Night back in 1998:

Aww, don't they look cute together?

Happy Fiftieth Birthday, BBC2!

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