Wednesday 5 October 2022

Of Brittas and Men


Over on Ganymede & Titan, a rewatch of all 74 episodes of Red Dwarf is underway for their quinquennial ranking of said episodes from worst to best. They hit Series V this week, and I found one comment particularly intriguing: describing a certain line of Rimmer's (Chris Barrie) in the episode Holoship as "a bit of Brittas creeping in", in reference to Chris Barrie's other famous sitcom character, Gordon Brittas (Chris Barrie).

I wondered just how far apart Barrie's stints as Rimmer and Brittas, both sitcoms filmed in front of a live studio audience, were, and how recently it had been since Barrie had last played Brittas on the occasion of that episode. But whilst recording dates for every episode of Red Dwarf that played out before a live audience are easily accessible online, the same is not true for Brittas.