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.

I did quite a bit of searching, and eventually was rewarded with this, from the July 1993 edition of the Red Dwarf Smegazine: in the "News" section, audience tickets for the next series of Brittas are promoted thusly:

And next month, Chris Barrie starts filming a new series about the well-meaning but disaster- prone Leisure Centre Manager in an extended run of eight episodes. Tickets for the live audience recordings (every Saturday, 25th September - 13th November) are available from the BBC by writing to the BBC TV Ticket Unit, Centre House. Wood Lane, London W12 7SB. The tickets are free, but numbers are limited and audience members must be at least 14 years old. Don't forget to enclose an SAE.

So, presuming those episodes were recorded as scheduled, Chris Barrie filmed Red Dwarf VI in front of a live studio audience for six weeks from 20/02/93 to 27/03/93, and then the fourth series of Brittas for eight weeks between 25/09/93 to 13/11/13 -- a six-month gap inbetween.

That series of Brittas TXed from the 10th January to the 7th March 1994 (beginning just weeks after the broadcast of Red Dwarf VI, which wrapped up in mid-November of 1993) -- but the fifth series (made up of another eight episodes plus a Christmas special) began broadcast just seven months later, on 31 October, so presumably Chris Barrie was back in front of the audience not that long afterwards? And was there an even shorter gap between studio recordings of Dwarf and Brittas for an earlier (or even later) series? If you compare the broadcast dates of the other series, it's hard not to reach such a conclusion:

1991: The Brittas Empire Series 1 airs 03/01/91 to 14/02/91; Red Dwarf IV airs 14/02/91 to 21/03/91 (The fact that both shows had new episodes on the same night -- their finale and premiere, respectively -- seems like a curious thing that nobody's ever really discussed before!)

1992: The Brittas Empire Series 2 airs 02/02/92 to 20/02/92; Red Dwarf V airs 20/02/92 to 26/03/92 (And it happened for a second year running -- is this coincidence, or a deliberate attempt at audience cross-promotion or something? Or just trying to ensure as little overlap as possible?)

[Brittas 3 TXes in early 1993, implying recording dates in late 1992 -- backed up by a mention in the October 1992 Smegazine, but it doesn't give specific dates -- before Chris Barrie records Red Dwarf VI in early 1993, then Brittas 4 later in the year and Brittas 5 at some point in 1994; Brittas 6 was probably recorded at some point in 1995 for RX in Spring 1996, whilst Red Dwarf was on a hiatus that ended with the filming of Series VII in the summer of 1996]

1997: The Brittas Empire Series 7 airs 06/01/97 to 24/02/97; Red Dwarf VII airs 17/01/97 to 07/03/97, but Chris Barrie only appears in episodes 1-3 & 5

So, Chris Barrie certainly had a very busy schedule in front of a live audience up until around 1996 (Red Dwarf VII not using a studio audience)... but can we work out exactly when? If you were in the audience for any Brittas episode and can provide exact dates, please get in touch!