Suzie Eisfelder
February 19, 2015

Yes, I know this is Doug Naylor and Rob Grant, just deal with it. This writing duo write well separately but together they are dynamite. The Robert Llewellyn who played Kryten in Red Dwarf complained about the writing and how challenging it was to memorise as it was

so unique and so free of cliches that a long Kryten speech is very hard to learn.

When I have learned other people’s scripts, I have found there is usually a turn of phrase or a sentence structure that you recognize and you already have at your disposal. It’s therefore fairly easy to learn as you almost know it already, you only have to memorize it in order.

With Kryten talk, this is never the case. Rob and Doug will never use a hackneyed turn of phrase, they always come up with new ways of saying something.

a nice illustration from Robert Llewellyn’s autobiography The Man in the Rubber Mask. You know he married an Australian woman – Llewellyn, not Grant or Naylor.

I first came across Red Dwarf on TV when the kids were young and on their way to bed. The TV was on, I was walking past and there’s this strange show I didn’t get. Then comes season III and the screen showed some extremely strange stuff, I’m sitting there going ‘how did they do that?’ The episode was called Backwards and it needs to be seen to be believed before I knew I was a regular watcher eventually buying all the DVDs and books. The photos show what I have on hand, I seem to be missing some books as I’ve lent them out and they’ve not been boomerangs.

Books
Three Red Dwarf books. All brilliant and although similar to the TV series as they have a similar idea and plot they are completely different. They are all well worth reading.
DVD
All the DVDs. If you look at Season IV you’ll find the characters doing a live cooking show, in character. I got asthma from laughing so much…tears rolling down my face. Beat the Geek is a Red Dwarf game signed by Norman Lovatt but it’s not mine.
Llewellyn and Charles
The Man in the Rubber Mask by Robert Llewellyn details his time on the Red Dwarf set and how hard it was to be fitted into his costume. The Log by Craig Charles is a bit bizarre and fits his character on Red Dwarf to a tee.

 

Buying time. Booktopia has Last Human for sale. Be careful when searching for Red Dwarf on Booktopia (or anywhere else) as you’ll get lots of hits, many of them scientific. The Man in the Rubber Mask, he’s written some other stuff but this is the best. Angus and Robertson have the whole set of DVDs, borrow from the video shop before buying the whole lot just in case you don’t like them. Angus and Robertson also have Fat by Rob Grant, a futuristic look at losing weight, I didn’t bring it off the shelf but I do have it, intriguing and thought provoking.

    1. I’ve always thought they were more of a ‘boy’ thing but some of the work in them absolutely fascinated me. You really should watch Backwards with Boo (but possibly watch it by yourself first) and see what he thinks.

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