Red Dwarf‘s writer and creator Rob Grant has died suddenly aged 70, it was announced today. His family released a statement with read: “With much sadness, we have to announce that Rob Grant, co-creator of Red Dwarf, passed away suddenly yesterday afternoon (25/02/26), a great loss to his family, friends and comedy fans across the world“.
Craig Charles – who played Dave Lister in the sitcom – paid tribute to the writer, saying: “Earlier today I was informed of the passing of @realrobgrant .i am in total shock. He was one of the funniest people I’ve ever met. A visionary. My heart goes out to his family and friends. The impact he and Doug had on the course of my life is immeasurable. RIP ROB.”
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Red Dwarf, which Grant created with Doug Naylor, launched on BBC2 in 1998. It became one of Britain’s most loved sitcoms.
Grant recently announced he was working with Andrew Marshall on the first Red Dwarf novel in 30 years. Titled Red Dwarf: Titan, the plan was to publish the book in July.
Speaking this week to Radio Times, Grant explained: “It’s Lister and Rimmer before the accident on shore leave on Titan. It’s set one universe to the side, so we can have familiar characters but we can do different things with them, because the difficulty was writing something that was going to be original and fresh and using the same characters without breaking the canon. So it was quite an intricate bit of work that actually took us about a year-and-a-half longer than we were hoping!”
He went on to explain: “It’s common knowledge that there has been a legal dispute over the rights of Red Dwarf for bloody years. It went to court, and it made Bleak House look like an episode of Judge Judy! But we finally got it resolved in 2023, and suddenly all these rights became available to me, and one of them was for the prequel, and that’s where it started.
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BBC)
“We originally wrote it as a treatment for a TV spin-off and took it around, but it’s horribly expensive, and we couldn’t really raise enough interest. We might down the line… we’ve been talking to streamers about it but, when you read it, [you’ll realise] it’s a whole world you’d have to create. It wouldn’t be cheap.”
In September, it was revealed the show’s comeback had been cancelled despite a few episodes having already been written. The show was due to make a return after UKTV executives approved plans for a brand-new special.
However, writer Doug revealed the sci-fi programme was axed a few months after it was commissioned. Doug, who was ‘two-thirds’ of his way into the script when it was cancelled, revealed the heart-breaking news in a Reddit Q&A thread about the fan-favourite show.
Doug said: “Back in January 2023, I went in for a meeting with UKTV who said they wanted to progress a new 90-minute Red Dwarf special. The cast were all on board and I was told to start writing.
“Several months later, things were progressing and I had got two-thirds of the way through the script, I had just signed my writer’s contract, when I got an e-mail from UKTV who said they had difficult news to share – they were no longer going to commission scripted comedy, including the RD special, which I hadn’t yet sent them.”
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