Red Dwarf: First Live Studio Recording

As you may or may not know, the new series of Red Dwarf will be filmed in front of a live studio audience unlike the last Red Dwarf adventure to hit our television screens, Back to Earth, which was filmed not only without an audience but without any real sets as well.

However, Red Dwarf X will be filmed with a live audience present and those lovely folks at Reddwarf.co.uk have a nice Christmas present for you with a first hand account of being at the first ‘live’ Red Dwarf taping in thirteen years:

“It’s a cold Friday night in December, on a studio lot in the grounds of an old manor house six miles or so south of Heathrow. Three hundred people are crammed into the rows of seating that line one wall of the warehouse-sized Studio K…

Beforehand, as the lucky ticket-holders gather in an assigned holding area, the sense of anticipation in the air is palpable. While some of the people in the room might have seen Red Dwarf being recorded before, for many it’s an opportunity they’ve never before had – and might have thought, five years or even six months ago, that they’d never get.

Everyone files into the studio, immediately getting a first look at the brand new sets. There’s almost as much interest among fans in how the show’s going to look as there is in seeing the episodes themselves – and the audible gasps from many on the way in suggest that, once again, the production team have knocked it out of the park.

A character-driven story based around an inventive sci-fi plot, of course we can’t say anything about what happens in it, but about the biggest indication we can give you of its content is this: it’s Red Dwarf. Gloriously, and entirely. And it’s funny – really funny. You might think we’re biased, but there are two hundred and ninety-nine other people in the room laughing as hard as we are – even, in some cases, after three or four takes of the same joke.

With the final scenes of the episode – not to mention a fair amount of material for the next Smeg Ups compilation – in the can, the audience filter out into the night once more, and there’s a buzzing, unanimous consensus: based on this first episode, Red Dwarf X is a series refreshed and revitalised…”

The rest can be read at the Red Dwarf site here, but we can also share these two pics, one which is above the quoted text and the other to the right, which although teasing, give you an idea of the design work as well as the scale the new Red Dwarf will encompass.

Red Dwarf X continues filming through January 2012 to be shown on Dave late in the same year.

(Via Red Dwarf.co.uk)