Writers Rob Grant and Doug Naylor had had a brilliant idea – a sitcom set in space featuring the last survivor of the human race. But producer Paul Jackson had told them they wouldn’t be able to sell it. And indeed, everything about getting the show on the air had been a struggle – it was rejected three times by the BBC, only funded due to an accounting error, the whole first series was scrapped because of strikes – basically a nightmare.
Ultimately, it worked, and not least because the core cast just gelled in the way that is so crucial for good sitcoms. But finding the right people wasn’t easy either. At a lunch with sitcom royalty Ray Galton and Alan Simpson (Steptoe and Son), they were given very useful advice: hire strong actors who can play the truth of the relationships. Don’t go for comedians. You can write the jokes. They need to bring the texture. John Lloyd, producer of Not the Nine O’Clock News and Spitting Image also suggested that they might want to steer clear of familiar Oxbridge faces such as Rowan Atkinson, Hugh Laurie and Stephen Fry. Having delivered this advice, John Lloyd began work on his next series Blackadder, starring Rowan Atkinson, Hugh Laurie and Stephen Fry.
For a while Alan Rickman was in the frame to play neurotic hologram Arnold Rimmer, but he wasn’t sure about recording the show in front of a live audience. Alfred Molina was more enthusiastic and he was a proper actor. Okay, great. But if having a hologram as a character was an odd idea, the script’s biggest swing was surely the character of the Cat. After three million years of evolution, a single pregnant moggy has given rise to a whole intelligent species, almost all of whom have left the ship in search of paradise, leaving behind just one specimen, described in the script as “an incredibly smooth looking black guy wearing a grey silk suit.”
Keen to make sure that his new project wasn’t going to become a hate crime, producer Paul Jackson sent the script to right-on performance poet Craig Charles, whose mother was Irish and whose father was from Guyana. Jackson knew Charles from his appearances on Saturday Live and he quickly read the script and saw nothing racist in the Cat character, but when he reported back to Jackson, he mentioned that he’d like to audition for the part of Lister.
Rob Grant and Doug Naylor were horrified. This angry young beatnik wasn’t anything like the space bum they’d imagined and – to make matters worse – he was a Scouser. There was no way that two Manchester lads were going to cast a scally from Liverpool as the lead in their career-defining sitcom. But Jackson was intrigued by the idea and insisted that Charles meet the writers and audition. Charles, who had literally zero acting experience, recalls his then partner sending him off to the meeting with cheerful words of encouragement to the effect that he couldn’t act, and he wasn’t funny. But on meeting him, Rob and Doug found themselves bowled over by this cheeky, charming guy who was not at all like the spiky, combative character they’d seen on TV. And his reading was the best they’d heard yet. Could they really cast a performance poet with no acting experience as Lister?
By now, Alfred Molina was getting cold feet, and Jackson remembered working with Chris Barrie. He’d been a core part of the Spitting Image team, providing the voices of David Coleman and Ronald Reagan among many others, so he knew Rob and Doug, and he’d hosted an episode of Saturday Live where he’d seemed very comfortable in front of a crowd. Jackson also recalled that he came from a military family, which might give him an insight into the uptight, career-oriented Arnold Rimmer. The chemistry seemed right between him and Craig Charles, and meanwhile, the part of loopy computer Holly had gone to comedian Norman Lovett and the part of the Cat to West End dancer Danny John-Jules. In part, Paul Jackson and the writers were very impressed by the insouciant, cat-like way in which he swaggered in half-an-hour late. John-Jules now recalls that he hadn’t been aware that he’d got the time wrong. His dad’s old wedding gear, a genuine Zoot suit, provided an impromptu costume.
So far from assembling a crew of top-flight actors, they ended up with a poet, a dancer, an impressionist and a stand-up comedian. But also, with no particular plan in mind, their core cast of four featured two non-white actors. This was 1988. Non-white actors only featured in the regular casts of UK sitcoms if the plot depended on it, such as Don Warrington in Rising Damp. But throughout 74 episodes of Red Dwarf, it was only ever Lister and Cat – their race never became an issue.
The only near exception to this rule is in the stand-out episode Dimension Jump where everybody plays alternate versions of their regular characters – mainly Chris Barrie as the swaggeringly heroic Ace Rimmer, but also Craig Charles as mechanic Spanners and Danny John-Jules as a kindly Chaplain. This last part was changed during rehearsals. Initially, Rob and Doug had simply inverted the character that John-Jules was playing in the rest of the series and so had reinvented the cool and immaculately presented Cat as a scruffy janitor who was seen sweeping the floors. But it suddenly seemed wrong for the show to be presenting a Black actor working as a janitor, and so Rob and Doug – who had heard John-Jules doing a benevolent West Indian voice over lunch – reimagined the character as a padre instead.
But that’s Red Dwarf all over. For 36 years it’s been quietly doing things no other sitcom could even dream of. And long may it continue.
Red Dwarf: Discovering the TV Series by Tom Salinsky is available to order from Amazon here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Red-Dwarf-Discovering-TV-1988-1993/dp/1399034944
 | About the Author Tom Salinsky is a writer, podcaster and corporate coach living in London with his wife and too many cats. With Deborah Frances-White, he is the author of The Improv Handbook (Methuen Drama, 2008). With Robert Khan he is the author of five plays and many audio dramas for Big Finish. With his podcast colleagues John Dorney and Jessica Regan, he is the author of Best Pick: A Journey Through Film History and the Academy Awards (Rowman & Littlefield, 2022). As a solo author, he has published Star Trek: Discovering the Television Series (Pen & Sword, 2024), the second volume of which is due for release in 2025. |
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