Goodbye, Rob Grant – the Red Dwarf co-creator who found the laughs in loneliness

Nerds had yet to inherit the earth in 1988, so any 10-year-old sci-fi fan in the UK tended to feel isolated. Doctor Who, then scorned and shabby, would be spoken about at low volume in shadowy corners of the playground. Multi-sided dice were rolled only behind closed bedroom doors. Marvel comics hidden within the pages of Smash Hits in the canteen for fear of being ripped away and rubbished.

It was a lonely, sequestered life. But not, as we soon discovered, as lonely and sequestered a life as the one about to be led by Dave Lister (Craig Charles), the underdog, uber-slob hero of a then-unknown comedy by the name of Red Dwarf, scripted by Doug Naylor and his now-late writing partner Rob Grant.

That first series is now looked upon as a pale, grey, rudimentary version of the show that eventually became BBC Two’s most-watched comedy of the period. But for primary-school-age children, who gravitated towards fantasy rather than football, it was instant catnip. Or, as it ought really to be written, Catnip with a capital C.

Its low budget gave it an air of stripped-back bleakness that matched the desolate situation in which Lister found himself. Here was the last human alive charting a course through the blankness of space on this huge mining vessel.

And, thanks to a species-ending disaster, all he had for company at that stage was the ship’s senile computer (Norman Lovett), a walking-talking-preening descendant of his pet cat (Danny John-Jules) and a hologram recreation of Arnold Rimmer (Chris Barrie), the dead bunkmate who he’d loathed in life.

But the genius of this concept was that it captured so perfectly a sense of loneliness. And, in so doing, made so many of us who were adrift feel less alone. This felt like TV made especially for kids of our age.

At the time, Red Dwarf’s forebear The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy seemed out of reach and a little posh. Douglas Adams’s books were read by older siblings. Cousins. Teachers. Its literary humour was off limits; the television adaptation having aired when we were too young to really appreciate it.

Red Dwarf, on the other hand, was scrappy and immediately accessible. We seized upon those characters, revelled in the grubbiness of Lister’s usage of “smeg”, enjoyed having our brains stretched and kneaded by such concepts as stasis booths, genetic evolution and future echoes.

It depicted the vastness of space but filtered it through the everyday disarray of curry stains and knackered toasters. It taught us that authority figures were often buffoons and that losers could be the winners. It tamed our existential angst and turned it into a gag.

And so, for all these reasons, many will no doubt be feeling thankful this morning for the imaginations of Grant and Naylor, despite the sad news of the former’s death at the age of just 70.

For this Dwarfer, the apotheosis of their partnership is not even the TV series but the novel they wrote following that initial small-screen success: Infinity Welcomes Careful Drivers, a first-edition copy of which I still own more than three decades after having it signed by them at an event in (I think?) Manchester’s one-time bookshop Sherratt & Hughes.

To this day, it feels like Red Dwarf in its purest form. On the page, Lister’s melancholy is starker. Rimmer's petty bureaucratic outlook more painful and soul-destroying. For many of its chapters, it feels like the two of them are locked together for eternity while being mocked by the emptiness of space that surrounds them.

But despite its preoccupation being extinction, it’s a strangely comforting read. What we feel ultimately is that, with the cosmos no longer demanding anything of Lister, he’s free to be himself and kick back. Humanity has been all but wiped out but what’s left is... well, surviving.

And the solace for those affected by the death of Lister’s co-creator Rob Grant is that his and Naylor’s work will also survive. Even thrive – with a prequel novel that Grant penned with Andrew Marshall set to be published posthumously later this year.

But for the nerdier among us who clung to Red Dwarf from the start, before the mythology got knottier and the special effects slicker, there remains the ultimate comfort. That oddballs and rejects don’t have to feel sidelined by the universe – they can actually be its most important characters.

Watch Rob Grant speaking to Radio Times earlier this year about new prequel novel Titan:

Red Dwarf: Titan will publish in hardback, ebook and audio on 16 July 2026 – it is available for pre-order now. Red Dwarf is streaming now on BBC iPlayer.

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