About Red Dwarf

The Creators

Rob Grant (L) and Doug Naylor (R) were a writing duo from Manchester who went to University together in Liverpool, and began writing comedy in the early 1980s. Having cut their teeth on Radio 4 with the sketch series Cliché and Son of Cliché, and the sitcom Wrinkles, they moved into television with sketch-writing work for Jasper Carrott, and eventually became head writers on ITV's popular satirical puppet-based show Spitting Image. During their time on that show, they wrote the lyrics to the number one parody single The Chicken Song, and its festive follow-up Santa Claus is on the Dole.

In 1983, they wrote the first pilot script for Red Dwarf, based on a series of sketches from Son of Cliché, which was eventually first broadcast in early 1988. In 1989, for the third series, they became producers of the show as well as writers - and in 1991's Series V, directors as well. They also jointly wrote two spinoff novels based on the show. During this time, they were known collaboratively as "Grant Naylor", a pseudonym that they called a "gestalt entity" and which also gave its name to Red Dwarf's production company.

In 1993, their last production together was the pilot of a new sitcom called The 10%ers. Following Rob Grant's departure from the partnership, both series of the show (along with the next series of Red Dwarf) were written by Naylor in conjunction with a group of co-writers. 1995's Last Human and 1996's Backwards, two further Red Dwarf tie-ins, were Doug and Rob's first solo novels respectively.

Since leaving Red Dwarf, Rob has written three more solo novels (Colony, Incompetence and Fat) and created the TV series Dark Ages (ITV) and The Strangerers (Sky One). In 2018, his radio series, The Quanderhorn Xperimentations, co-written with Andrew Marshall, premiered on BBC Radio 4. The pair followed this up, just a few days later, with a novel based on the show, and a second series was broadcast in 2020. Alongside Paul Jackson, Rob created Lockdown Theatre in 2020; a charity initiative which has so far raised close to half a million pounds for the arts and sports sectors.

Aside from continuing to write and direct Red Dwarf, Doug has also formed the production company Three Feet Productions (with son and co-producer Richard Naylor), and in 2014 created the BBC comedy pilot Over to Bill.