When casting the first series of Red Dwarf in the late eighties, Rob Grant and Doug Naylor hoped to get four "proper" actors to play the four regular roles. They ended up with an impressionist, a poet, a stand-up comedian and a dancer. When David Ross filmed his guest spot as the original Kryten in the eponymous second series episode, he was horrified to discover that none of the main cast were 'legit' actors. The original intention for "The End" was for all the ship's crew to be played by big-name comedy stars... and then for them to all be killed off, leaving viewers with "Craig who?" as the lead. These are all stories any Red Dwarf fan will likely recognise.
If one searches the BBC Genome for mentions of the Red Dwarf cast prior to the small rouge one's debut in February 1988, the first mention of Craig Charles is in Lift Off, a CBBC series about which very little information appears to exist; from the Radio Times synopses and limited details I can find about it elsewhere on the internet, it seems like a hybrid of a magazine show and a sitcom. Charles was then a regular guest in his capacity as a performance poet on shows like Loose Ends (which, in an interesting coincidence, regularly featured 'additional material' from Red Dwarf VII guest writer James Hendrie) and Pebble Mill at One, and also had a regular slot on the BBC's feedback program Network, providing an "irreverent review" of the BBC's monthly output. Notably, the RT's synopsis of Network describes him as an "actor/comic", despite the fact he seemingly hadn't yet done any acting on television at that point.
Although Wikipedia would have you believe that Red Dwarf was Craig Charles' first televised acting role, it is wrong. That was The Marksman, a BBC One adaptation of Hugh C. Rae's novel aired in three parts in December 1987, just two months before Red Dwarf's debut. Also in the cast list of that adaptation was one Nick Maloney, who had also appeared in Rob Grant and Doug Naylor's radio sketch show Cliche (and its sequel Son of Cliche), their radio sitcoms Wrinkles and Wally Who?, and Carrot's Lib (co-written by Grant and Naylor, and also featuring one Christopher Barrie as a regular performer). Maloney would also have made it into the very first episode of Red Dwarf, as the original George McIntyre, but the electrician's strike that caused the original shoot of the series to be cancelled put paid to that (photos of Maloney-as-McIntyre during rehearsals can be seen on the photo gallery of The Bodysnatcher Collection).
 |
| This is a Radio Times cover from 1998, but hey, I've got to break this article up with something. |
Chris Barrie had, of course, made his name on shows such as Spitting Image and Carrot's Lib, and indeed Grant Naylor's own Son of Cliche (other early Grant Naylor collaborators who later made it into Dwarf with guest spots include Gordon Sallkild and David Ross, both of whom appeared in Wrinkles), with other early credits including The Young Ones, Saturday Live, The Lenny Henry Show, Alas Smith and Jones, Week Ending, Blackadder the Third and Happy Families (the show which later had its budget for a nonexistent second series used for the first series of Dwarf). Perhaps one of Barrie's best-known Spitting Image impressions was Ronald Reagan, and amusingly it seems he also played the President of the United States in this Radio 4 play in March 1986 - it seems likely he reused his Reagan impression there.
As Danny John-Jules started his career as a West End dancer, searching the Genome for his name is perhaps an even less reliable science for looking at his early career than it is for the first two; indeed, Red Dwarf is the very first credit that comes up if you do so. He was one of the original cast members of the 1984 production of Starlight Express, and one of his first television appearances was as a dancer (specifically the part of a dancer, so one wonders if he was booked just to be an actual dancer and ended up with some lines later) in Marmalade Atkins' send-up of Fame for the Naughtiest Girl in the World's second television series, Danger: Marmalade at Work; he was also a regular dancer on Wayne Sleep's ensemble variety dance show, The Hot Shoe Show. He was also in Labyrinth and Little Shop of Horrors, which you probably already know.
Norman Lovett also has few appearances in the Genome's listings prior to Red Dwarf, but also counts The Young Ones and Happy Families among his very early credits. I would, however, quite like to listen to this... and wouldn't you know it, there's James Hendrie providing additional material again. He was also a co-writer on one of Grant Naylor's very first writing credits, The News Huddlines, and another VII writer, Kim Fuller, worked with them on Three of a Kind and Paul Squire, Esq.
Turning our attention to some of the later regulars; Mac McDonald (a guest in Series I and II, and a regular cast member in Series VIII) shows up quite a few times on the Genome prior to February 1988, perhaps demonstrating the original desire to introduce and kill off a load of bigger names in "The End", and Robert Llewellyn's sole BBC appearance prior to the third series of Dwarf is in a Radio 4 sitcom by Stephen Sheridan which seems to have more than a little in common with Bleak Expectations, although an earlier role which doesn't appear on the Genome is his time as a regular on the 1987 Channel 4 sitcom The Corner House, for which he was also one of the writers, and apparently is about as fondly remembered as "Beyond a Joke". Her appearance in "Parallel Universe" is the earliest television appearance of Hattie Hayridge's I can find, on the BBC or otherwise, although it can't have been as the story goes that she was cast after Paul Jackson spotted her on Channel 4's Saturday Live.
So, what have we learnt? Nothing of practical use, at any rate, unless you count the fact that I've now been writing a weekly blog for nearly three years and still have no idea how to properly end an article. But, erm, we've perhaps challenged the idea that all the main cast of Red Dwarf were total unknowns when the show started? Maybe?
No comments:
Post a Comment