HOLLY COMES HOME
NORMAN LOVETT makes a welcome return as red dwarf’s deadpan computer
AFTER BECOMING
DISHEARTENED by a string of rejections, writer Doug Naylor was on the point of giving up when the BBC commissioned his sci-fi comedy, Red Dwarf, in 1987.
Now, nearly 30 years after the sitcom about a group of misfits marooned in deep space first appeared on our screens, the boys are still going strong and return this week for a 12th series.
Fans of the show have come to expect plenty of guest stars amid the sci-fi shenanigans and there’s a very special return planned for the new six-part offering. After 18 years away from the show, Norman Lovett will be returning for one episode only as the ship’s highly intelligent, gloriously deadpan computer, Holly.
STORMIN’ NORMAN
‘We haven’t worked with Norman for a few years,’ says Craig Charles, who plays Dave Lister, the last surviving human in the universe. ‘We film in front of a live audience and when he was revealed they went mad. I could have gone and had dinner and come back and they’d still have been cheering!’
The exact details of Holly’s return are being kept strictly under wraps, but Lovett isn’t the only cameo in the new run. James Buckley from The Inbetweeners, comedian Johnny Vegas and Call the Midwife star Helen George will also be guest starring.
In this week’s first episode,
The Hobbitõs Ryan Gage steals the show as a guitar-wielding version of Adolf Hitler, as the gang take a jaunt through history. Lister, Rimmer (Chris Barrie), Kryten (Robert Llewellyn) and Cat (Danny John Jules) chance upon a research centre where notorious figures from the past have been recreated and ‘cured’ of evil…
‘The beauty of the sci-fi setting is that we can go anywhere and meet anyone,’ explains Charles. ‘The science fiction we did in our first shows has now become science fact. Maybe the stuff we’re doing now will become the science fact in the future.’