Red Dwarf is a British science fiction comedy franchise, primarily comprising eight series of a television sitcom that ran on BBC2 between 1988 and 1999 and subsequently achieved a global cult following. It was created and written by Rob Grant and Doug Naylor. The show originated from a recurring sketch, Dave Hollins: Space Cadet part of the mid-1980s BBC Radio 4 comedy show Son of Cliché, also scripted by Grant and Naylor. In addition to the television series, there have also been four bestselling novels, two pilot episodes for an American version of the show, and tie-in books, magazines and other merchandise. Despite the pastiche of science fiction used as a backdrop, Red Dwarf is primarily a character-driven comedy, with off-the-wall science fiction elements used as complementary plot devices. In the early series episodes, a recurring source of comedy was "The Odd Couple" relationship between Dave Lister and Arnold Rimmer, the two central characters of the show, who have an intense dislike for each other but are trapped together deep in space. The show's highest accolade came in 1994, when an episode from the sixth series, "Gunmen of the Apocalypse", won an International Emmy Award in the Popular Arts category, and in the same year the show was also awarded 'Best BBC Comedy series' at the British Comedy Awards. The series attracted its highest ratings — of over eight million viewers — during the eighth series in 1999. For years, the future of the series was uncertain. There were attempts to make a movie, but funding could not be found. The BBC then rejected plans for a ninth series. In September 2008, the official Red Dwarf website confirmed a new four-episode production (two regular episodes plus supporting anniversary and 'making of' show) had been commissioned by Freeview channel Dave.

The main setting of the series is the mining spaceship Red Dwarf which is 6 miles (10 km) long, 5 miles (8 km) tall, and 4 miles (6 km) wide. In the first episode, an on-board radiation leak of cadmium II kills everyone except for low-ranking technician Dave Lister, who is in suspended animation at the time, and his pregnant cat, Frankenstein, who is safely sealed in the cargo hold. Following the accident, the ship's computer Holly has to keep Lister in stasis until the background radiation dies down—a process that takes three million years. Lister therefore emerges as the last human being in the universe—but not the only life form on-board the ship. His former bunkmate and immediate superior Arnold Rimmer is resurrected by Holly as a hologram to keep Lister sane. At the same time, a creature known only as Cat is the last known surviving member of Felis sapiens, a race of humanoids that evolved in the ship's hold from Lister's cat, Frankenstein, and her kittens during the 3 million years that Lister was in stasis. The main dramatic thrust of the early series is Lister's desire to return home to Earth. As their journey begins, the not-so-intrepid crew encounters such phenomena as time distortions, faster than light travel, mutant diseases and strange lifeforms that developed in the intervening millions of years. During the second series, the group encounter the sanitation mechanoid Kryten, rescuing him from a long-since crashed vessel. Initially, Kryten only appeared in one episode of series two, but by the beginning of series three he had become a regular character. At the end of series five, Red Dwarf itself is stolen from the crew, forcing them to travel in the smaller Starbug craft for the subsequent two series, with the added side-effect that they lose contact with Holly. In series seven, Rimmer departs the crew to take up the role of his alter-ego from a parallel universe, Ace Rimmer, whose name has become a long-standing legend and a legacy passed down from dimension to dimension. Shortly afterwards, the crew find a parallel version of themselves from a universe in which Kristine Kochanski, Lister's former girlfriend, was the person put into stasis and so became the last remaining human. A complicated series of events leaves Kochanski stranded in "our" universe, and she is forced to join the crew. In the eighth series, Red Dwarf is reconstructed by the nanobots who had originally stolen it and had it broken down into its constituent atoms. In the process, the entire crew of the ship — including a pre-accident Rimmer — are resurrected, but the Starbug crew find themselves sentenced to two years in the ship's brig on a set of convoluted charges. The series ends with Red Dwarf being eaten away by a virus with the crew evacuated, save for Rimmer who is, in the cliffhanger ending, left stranded alone to face Death (and promptly knees him in the groin and flees).

Dave Lister, played by Craig Charles, is a genial Liverpudlian and self-described bum. He was the lowest-ranking crew member on the ship before the accident and has a long-standing desire to return to Earth and start a farm on Fiji (which is under three feet of water following a volcanic eruption), but is left impossibly far away by the accident that renders him the last surviving member of the human race.

His bunk mate Arnold Rimmer, played by Chris Barrie, is the second-lowest ranking member of the crew: a fussy, bureaucratic, neurotic coward, who is nevertheless judged by Holly to have the highest chance of keeping Lister sane when chosen to be the ship's one available hologram.

The Cat, played by Danny John-Jules, is a humanoid creature who evolved from the offspring of Lister's smuggled pet cat Frankenstein. Cat is concerned with little other than sleeping, eating and fawning over his appearance, and tends not to socialise with other members of the crew. As time goes by, however, he becomes more influenced by his human companions, and so begins to resemble a stylish, self-centred human.

The ship's computer, Holly (played by Norman Lovett during Series I, II, VII and VIII and Hattie Hayridge in Series III to V), has an IQ of 6,000, although this is severely depleted by the three million years he/she is left alone after the accident, having developed "computer senility". The change in appearance for Series III is explained by Holly having changed his face to resemble that of a computer from a parallel universe with whom he'd fallen in love.

Kryten, full name Kryten 2X4B-523P (played by Robert Llewellyn from Series III onwards, and as a one-off appearance in Series II by David Ross), was rescued by the crew from a crashed spaceship Nova 5, upon which he had continued to serve the ship's crew despite them having been dead for thousands or even millions of years. Kryten is a sanitation mechanoid and when first encountered by the crew, he was bound by his "behavioural protocols", but Lister gradually encouraged him to break his programming and think for himself. After an accident involving Lister's spacebike, Kryten was rebuilt by Lister, with a slightly different appearance and voice.

Kristine Kochanski (originally portrayed by Clare Grogan before Chloë Annett took on the role from Series VII) was initially a long-gone girlfriend of Lister's whose memory he had cherished ever since. However, a rift between two alternative dimensions revealed that, in the alternative dimension, Kochanski had survived the Red Dwarf cadmium II accident. She joined Lister and the crew after the link to her own dimension collapsed.

Captain Frank Hollister (played by Mac McDonald) died in the original cadmium II accident and was revived later on when the nanobots re-built the Red Dwarf ship.

Olaf Petersen (played by Mark Williams) was one of Lister's drinking buddies on the ship.

Lister's other drinking buddies were Selby and Chen (played by David Gillespie and Paul Bradley, respectively).

When Lister and Rimmer were imprisoned, and then enrolled in the conscript/suicide mission unit known as the Canaries, they socialised with the likes of Kill Crazy (played by Jake Wood) and Baxter (played by Ricky Grover) and both were on hand to help out with problems.

Warden Ackerman (played by Graham McTavish) would also turn up to torment the imprisoned pair.