From the vault: Robot Wars w/ Craig Charles
As we move closer to the long-awaited, highly-anticipated, Red Dwarf X, I started thinking about all the other great series that the Boys from the Dwarf did over the years to pass the time between the greatness of RD.
Over the years, Robert Llewellyn (Kryten) has been quite the busy Series 4000 mechanoid acting in a number of comedy and drama episodes such as Hustle, Bottom, Murder Most Horrid, Alas Smith and Jones. More recently, Llewellyn has been spending time as presenter for Junkyard Wars and, more recently, his own creation, Carpool.
Chris Barrie (Arnold Rimmer) probably has his most notable non-Red Dwarf role as Hillary, the butler in the Lara Croft movie series, not to mention the very underrated, Brittas Empire.
Danny John-Jules (Cat), most recently, has spent some quality time on a small Caribbean island as head of the local police force along with the newly arrived Detective Inspector Richard Poole (Ben Miller), filming Death In Paradise.
Finally, Craig Charles (Dave Lister). Besides his 6+ year stint on Coronation Street, Charles spent 5 years as host/presenter of one of the greats from BBC Two, Robot Wars. Who can argue with a competition between deadly robots designed and controlled by contestants. I mean, there are chainsaws, spikes, fire, and lots of flying metal with ‘house robots’ with names like Sir Killalot, Sgt Bash, Matilda and Shunt. While on the surface, this series was the epitome of the phrase, guilty pleasure, but it really was a cool series that, over the years, went a long way to create interest in science and technology from an audience of all ages.
For some ridiculous reason, clips of Robot Wars cannot be embedded so you’ll need to click here if you want to see some telly brilliance. If you can’t get enough, click here.
