Doug Naylor built a sitcom out of two men who cannot stand each other and put them in deep space, and the joke has held for more than three decades. The later series, written without Rob Grant, are thinner; the quarrel still lands.
Fi1m perspective
Somewhere in deep space, with the whole universe available, the thing Dave Lister most wants to argue about is Arnold Rimmer, and the thing Rimmer most wants to argue about is Lister. That is the Red Dwarf joke, and Doug Naylor has never needed another one. The ship can meet anything the writers care to invent; the grievance survives it. It is a sitcom that happens to be set in space, not a space series with jokes, and that order of priorities is why it works when it works.
Naylor and Rob Grant came up through BBC Radio 4 sketch shows in the mid-1980s, went on to head writing at Spitting Image, and created Red Dwarf under the joint name Grant Naylor, with Paul Jackson producing the early series. Naylor has been clear about the model: "Dark Star was a bunch of normal, average guys in space, not heroes." The pair took over producing from the third series and directing from the fifth. The partnership ended in the mid-1990s, and Naylor has carried the programme since, alone or with collaborators, his son Richard Naylor producing the later episodes and specials, up to the ninety-minute Red Dwarf: The Promised Land (2020), which he wrote and directed.
The run is uneven and we have said so. The series after the split, from VII onward, lean on the formulas the two men built together and often lack the snap of the earlier scripts. Naylor knows it. He has talked about wanting the later returns to get back to the core characters and away from conceptual detours, prison sets included, and the best of the later material does exactly that. We still laugh, without any shame, every time some danger to the ship is interrupted by Rimmer objecting to how Lister lives, because Chris Barrie plays the objection as if it were the real emergency and Craig Charles plays Lister as a man who has heard it all before and will hear it again.
The usual complaint is that Red Dwarf is a cult favourite rather than a fashionable hit. That is a fair description and not much of a criticism. Naylor's gift is narrow and durable: he writes people who are small in front of things that are large, and he trusts the smallness to be the point. He has also written novels in the same universe, from Red Dwarf: Infinity Welcomes Careful Drivers (1989) with Grant to Last Human (1995) on his own, and a children's book in 2025.
If you have never watched it, start with the early series, forgive the wobbles, and do not worry about the science. Nobody on board is worrying about it either.
Biography
Doug Naylor is an English writer, director and television producer, best known as co-creator with Rob Grant of the science-fiction comedy series Red Dwarf (1988). He has written or co-written every episode of the series and served as director and producer on numerous episodes.
Naylor was born in Manchester on 31 December 1955 and briefly studied at the University of Liverpool. With Grant he contributed to BBC radio sketch shows including Cliché and Son of Cliché, and worked on Spitting Image. He later created the ITV series The 10%ers (1994–1996). Naylor has also written Red Dwarf novels including Last Human (1995). His son Richard Naylor has worked as a producer on the series.
