While we’re on an anonymous questions kick, here’s something else I was asked recently: “Favourite behind-the-scenes moment?” Which gives me an excuse to talk about something brilliant.
Take a look at this scene from Red Dwarf, “Stasis Leak”, broadcast on the 27th September 1988.
This was shot on location in the Midland Hotel in Manchester, on the 5th/6th May 1988.1 Note the plaque for “The Ganymede Holiday Inn” is clearly above one for the Midland Hotel. Although the really interesting thing about that plaque is that it includes a close approximation of the Holiday Inn logo, which is perhaps a little odd for a BBC show of the time!
Now let’s turn to The Bodysnatcher Collection, a Red Dwarf DVD release from 2007 which I’ve talked about many times before on here. One of the features on that release was an in-depth behind-the-scenes making of documentary of Series 2, It’s Cold Outside, which features plenty of previously unseen clips from the raw recordings, both studio and location.
Such as the following. A discussion between Danny John-Jules and Doug Naylor, taken from the shooting of the Ganymede Holiday Inn scene, about spraying the nice lady with water… and who gets to do it. And it’s fantastic.
There’s something about the way Doug acknowledges comedy in that clip that is just magical. Comedy as its own thing, as something worth fighting for, as something that matters.
There are a great number of TV shows made now which would benefit from somebody stepping forward and saying: “It’a a comedy spray.”
Two days for the material at the Midland Hotel seems excessive, but that’s what the paperwork states. Other location material featuring Mark Williams as Petersen was shot at the Albert Dock on the 11th May 1988. ↩
4 comments
J. Wallace on 2 December 2024 @ 8am
I’ve always wondered, was this a union discussion, or a joke about one, maybe? The idea of it being a comedy element, and therefore timed by the performer feels like a way of stopping a props person or similar being assigned to it as a practical effect.
James on 2 December 2024 @ 2pm
They went a really long way to film those scenes- literally at the end of the same road the studios were on!
John J. Hoare on 2 December 2024 @ 5pm
Obviously it’s a retro hotel in Red Dwarf’s universe, deliberately designed to evoke 1980s Manchester.
James on 3 December 2024 @ 10am
And Better Than Life has ANOTHER 80s Manchester Hotel in it, also not too far from the studios, Sasha’s. My mum and sister actually stayed there around 10 years back after a concert… they both insist the room they were in was haunted.
Of course it’s a Britannia hotel which are all infamously shitholes anyway.