I Want Names, I Want Places, I Want Dates

Sometimes, when you hear what has become a well-worn anecdote about a TV show, you wonder whether it’s actually true or not. Other times, you have absolutely no doubt that it’s true. You just want to know more.

Red Dwarf has a great many of these tales. And something I’ve wondered for many years concerns the electricians’ strike which meant that the original recordings for Series 1 had to be abandoned. This has been told in many forms for years; for example, in the “Launching Red Dwarf” documentary on the Series 1 DVD in 2002, commissioner Peter Ridsdale-Scott had this to say:

“The worries were legion. First of all, we had the strike, which meant that every single episode of Red Dwarf of that first series went into production, into rehearsal, and never went into the studio. All six of them. So we’d spent all the money, and the BBC said ‘Well, sorry about this, it’s been very good and we’re sure it would have been a success, but that’s it’. And Paul [Jackson] and I said ‘Oh no. We may have spent the money, but we must remount this production, we must get it on.’ And we persuaded them, and it was put on.”

The same story is told on the official Red Dwarf site¹:

“On the second day of rehearsals, an electrician’s strike began at the BBC which effectively put a stop to any production. Unperturbed, the crew completed rehearsals for the first episode and moved on to the second, optimistic that they could fit the The End shoot onto the end of the other existing episode slots.

Except one by one, the episode recordings were called off as the strike persisted. The entire season, rehearsed and ready, was left for six months – past the originally intended dates for broadcast – before being remounted.”

All of which is great, and frankly a damn sight more than we get to hear about most sitcoms. But I’m greedy, and I want more. There’s one particular aspect about all this which has never quite been nailed down over the years. And that is: what were the exact dates of the abandoned Red Dwarf recordings for Series 1?

Let’s see what we can figure out. And our first obvious port of call: when did the electricians’ strike start? Oddly enough, the easiest news story to find online about is from the UPI, published on the 4th January 1987:

“Some 500 electricians went on strike against the British Broadcasting Corp. Sunday but television continued uninterrupted and BBC chiefs promised no blank screens — even if it means showing old movies.

The full effect of the strike was unlikely to be felt until Monday, when the BBC resumes its full schedule of newscasts, talk shows and other live events.

The electricians walked out when the BBC rejected their demand for a 20 percent basic pay increase. Pickets were established at several network buildings across the country.”

Sunday was the 4th January 1987 itself. So that’s the day the strike started, and the reddwarf.co.uk piece above seems to suggest that rehearsals for Series 1 started around this date.

As a ballpark as to whether we’re on the right track, let’s check out Dave’s documentary series Red Dwarf: The First Three Million Years, which to its credit had an unusually hefty section on the strike. That particular section starts as follows:

“In January 1987, as sets were being built in Manchester, the cast of Red Dwarf assembled at the infamous BBC rehearsal rooms in West London – affectionally dubbed The Acton Hilton.”

They then have a clip from a news report about the strike, from the 5th January 1987. We are most definitely on the right lines here. The abandoned studio dates for Series 1 surely started in January 1987. So from this, can we extrapolate exactly when they would have been?

Well, we could have a crack. Or we could cheat, and go directly to the source. Because I’ve teased you long enough: I have access here to the studio and OB schedules for BBC Manchester from 1987. And revealed within are the original, cancelled studio dates for Series 1.

Let’s take a look, alongside the remount dates for reference.

I’ll let you catch your breath for a minute.²

Now, a few questions do arise from those dates. Seemingly, the first two episodes were only intended to have one day in the studio, rather than the two they eventually got. Studio A was unbooked for the days where the pre-record day could have happened; is it possible that had the recordings gone ahead, they would have got their extra pre-record day anyway?

Secondly, it seems that the studio dates for the final episode and what would eventually become the pick-up week in the remounted recordings were never booked. We’re told that all six episodes were rehearsed; is it possible that this isn’t quite the case, and the series was officially abandoned after Episode 5? As ever, we end up with more questions than answers. But at least we’re one step closer to the truth.

Perhaps related to this point, it’s worth noting that when the strike ended is considerably less reported than when the strike started. In fact, it was finally called off after eight weeks. Here’s The Times, on the 28th February 1987:

“An eight-week strike by 600 members of the electricians’ union EEPTU at the BBC was called off yesterday under a compromise agreement worked out in talks organized by the arbitration service, Acas.

No agreement had been reached on the union’s 20 percent pay claim but it said the BBC had agreed to iron out the anomalies that had lead to scene workers getting more than elecricians.

The BBC said the agreement meant that the position of the electricians would be looked at in the current review of weekly-paid staff.”

Finally, there’s one other interesting thing concerning these dates. When were the model shots for Series 1 of Red Dwarf filmed?

The first shot was on the 27th January 1987, and they were still doing shots a couple of weeks later on the 11th February 1987. In other words: the model work for Series 1 was started when the series had already missed three weeks of studio recordings, and was still happening when the series seems to have been abandoned. For years, I had assumed the model shoot happened before the studio recordings were cancelled; this is clearly not the case.

So there you have it. A 35-year-old mystery solved… well, more or less, anyway. Which leaves us with one final little revelation.

Between the 6th January – 27th February 1987, the BBC managed to broadcast 16 episodes of Fax. If you don’t remember Fax – and I have to admit, I didn’t – then the Radio Times capsule gives as good a description as any:

“Fax is back to save the world; settle your squabbles; satisfy your curiosity. If you have the questions, Fax has the answers. Bill Oddie, Debbie Rix and ‘Mr Trivia’ Billy Butler find the offbeat, amazing and unusual nuggets of information that you want to know.”

Fax was shot the day before transmission, in… Manchester’s Studio A. The same studio as Red Dwarf.

And as far as I can tell, every single episode managed to be both made and transmitted during the electricians’ strike. Here is the start of Episode 1 of the series, recorded on the 5th January 1987 when the strike was already underway, and transmitted the very next day:

Does it amuse me intensely that Red Dwarf got shut out in the cold for nine months, while a Bill Oddie series broadcast straight after Children’s BBC managed to make it to air twice a week?

Yes, it does. It really, really does.

With many thanks to Robin Stonestreet and David Brunt, who provided me with access to the BBC Manchester studio schedules for 1987. Without their help, this article would have been a load of irritating guesswork.

UPDATE (20/2/22): Article updated to reflect that Fax wasn’t in fact a Children’s BBC programme. Thanks to Richard Ward for the correction.

1. Select the ‘Production’ section. ↩

2. Amusingly enough, as Darrell Maclaine pointed out to me, the planned original recordings almost directly match the TX dates of Red Dwarf‘s sister sitcom Filthy Rich & Catflap, shot in the same studio at Manchester with many of the same crew. That series was broadcast from 7th January – 11th February 1987. ↩

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