Red Dwarf returns for Season 10

: 13 January 2012; John Howell

rimmer10 The science fiction TV comedy Red Dwarf starring the irrepressible Dave Lister (Craig Charles), Arnold Rimmer (Chris Barrie), Kryten (Robert Llewellyn), and the Cat (Danny John-Jules), is back for Season 10 with 6 new episodes in 2012.

We last saw the Red Dwarf cast in three episodes entitled Back to Earth in 2009 (Season 9). It was a pretty awful return, with Blade Runner references that went nowhere and a sequence of escalating bad jokes and a weak story line that appeared to have been slapped together in a tremendous rush.

Will we get anything better this time out?

The six, thirty minute episodes will be recorded at Shepperton Studios between 16 December and 27 January. Red Dwarf Co-creator Doug Naylor is writing and directing (the other Red Dwarf Co-creator Rob Grant won't be back, unfortunately).

"Everything is being built here at Shepperton," executive producer Charles Armitage recently told SFX magazine."There are workshops full of Red Dwarf sets. We've got a brilliant designer, Michael Ralph, who did the last series of Primeval, and my feeling is the sets will very much become the fifth star."

"We're going back to what we were doing 12 years ago," he said. "It's very much at the request of the fans and the cast. They're very good performers and they like an audience. It's all about what works best, and once the new series became real, the audience thing became the main topic of conversation. Doug initially wasn't sure which way he wanted to go, but having been to a fan convention, looking at the Internet and Twitter, and talking to the four cast members, [we decided to do it this way]."

"The strange thing with Red Dwarf is, you're not sure if it's science fiction with comedy, or comedy with science fiction. It's both and it remains both," he said.

I would love to see Red Dwarf return with some of its original spark. Let's keep our fingers crossed and hope. We should see the new episodes by around October this year.

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