This article has been taken from SFX March 1999 edition and may not necessarily represent my views....

12 YEARS ON AND SEASON EIGHT KICKS OFF WITH THE ENTIRE CREW FROM SEASON ONE ABOARD RED DWARF - IN JAIL... CRAIG CHARLES AND CHRIS BARRIE TELL JIM SWALLOW WHAT IT'S LIKE BEHIND BARS

After seven seasons of deep space buffoonery, alien hi-jinks and jokes about curry, everything old is new again in the peculiar world of Red Dwarf. The show that went frown a story of some sad stellar losers lost in space on a gargantuan starship to a story of marginally more sad losers lost in space on a smaller starship has at last come home and gone back to its roots. It's back-to-basics once again as the erstwhile crew (4 Starbug - Dave Lister (Craig Charles), Cat (Danny John-Jules). Christine Kochanski (Chloe Annette) and Kryten (Robert Llewellyn) - return to the mining ship Red Dwarf, Only not in the way you might expect...

As the show's twelfth year and eighth season dawns, Red Dwarf is being reborn and remade anew. Having finally broken through the magic number of episodes to make it a viable sales package for "stripping" (showing an episode each weekday) in television syndication around the world, the series is now going balls-out to re-energise itself and perhaps rekindle some of the fire that has waned in recent years.

From episode one, "Back In The Red the long-lost mining ship returns to the fold, thanks to the work of trillions of molecule-sized nanobots, and along with the original Hulk' (the dour, egg like bonce of comedian Norman Lovett, Barrie is also back fulI time as a brand new not-dead Arnold Rimmer and so is the rest of the Dwarf's crew, even down to the ex-EastEnders cast members and the Skutters.

Is this all going to be too much for the galaxy's favourite space bum? In a break from filming one of the last couple of shows at Shepperton Studios, Craig Charles muses on some of the more drastic differences this season.

"I'm in uniform in the first episode!" he announces, as if he's just been asked to mud-wrestle in a sewer. "I'm up on charges, for stealing Starbug, and we end up in jail, so it's a different dynamic straight away."

Sentenced and confined to a cell with Rimmer on Floor 13, in an Alcatraz-like section of Red Dwarf called `The Tank,' Lister finds that his previous status as lowest ranked crewman on the ship has, if anything, actually been replaced by something worse.

"We're banged up with some of the strangest looking bods you've ever met - there was a chap there with more than 35 facial piercings - a lot of odd characters. We spend most of our time in a cell, unless we're going out on suicide missions to get out of doing sewer duty. At least I get some costume changes this year; I was getting bored walking around in that bloody boiler suit all the time. It was so hot: thermal underwear, a boiler suit and a big leather jacket on top of that..."

But Lister in the clink? There's a moment's pause as the thought sinks in. Given Craig Charles' real-life time spent behind bars, hasn't writer Doug Naylor made something & a hideous faux pas?

"I've done the research," Charles jokes. "I might as well make the video! I got all of that out of my system when I did 'The Governor', but when Doug Naylor used to visit me, I could tell that he was making notes! I thought he was coming because he was a mate, but he was doing research!"

The jail set recalls memories of the original "bunk-bed" room from the early seasons of Red Dwarf, but with the added decor of a stainless steel vacuum lavvy and a mesh window looking out over a colossal cell block. "The sleeping quarters are back to how they were. But the actual set of the jail looks like the council house I grew up in!"

As to previous years, Red Dwarf's sets are a compact series of units in one of Shepperton's soundstages. Next to the cell is a T-shaped corridor that can be re-dressed as scripts require, and further ahead a set of Artificial Reality machines (suspiciously similar to Trek Borg alcoves) and a generic office. According to the sign on the wall, this room is currently the clinic of gynaecologist Dr Legs Akimbo...

On this particular day, Craig Charles and Chris Barrie are rehearsing a scene with Red Dwarfs original Captain Hollister, actor Mac MacDonald. Hollister has been rendered mute, and communicates to Rimmer and Lister by writing his dialogue on cue cards. Across the way, a knot of technicians and assorted other grips crowd behind the camera, checking lighting levels and angles, while yet more crew fiddle with the track sections for the dolly rig.

In this episode, Lister and his crewmates are forced to become "canaries" for the Jupiter Mining Corporation (as in the birds that die if there s too much gas) sent out in harm's way aboard a CGI-ed dropship to look for trouble.

Events may have taken a bizarre turn for the worse come season eight, but if anything The Bug's complement has now gone full circle - everyone back on board a recreated Red Dwarf, perfect in every detail...

We have Holly back!" says Charles. "I miss Hattie [Hayridge], but it's nice to have Norman back,.. It's like he's never been away. He just got straight into it."

AND LIKE THE REST 0F THE CAST, CHARLES feels everyone's mellowed hugely since the show first burst on air in 1988.

"I think we're more settled in ourselves, more mature," he opines. "We've all had fallings out - we've been together since last August and if you stick creative people in a room together they're bound to get on each other's nerves, but this time it's been so painless. It gets less hard as we go on. We know our characters. We've been at it for 12 years.. In fact the whole of my adult life!"

Charles still finds the show's staying power and ever growing international success surprising "We're dubbed into Spanish and Japanese. We're on in America, Norway and Poland. We get eight year old and ten year old kids as fans and they weren't even born when the show started!"

Not bad for a series which only drew 500 000 viewers on its first showing...

"I personally think this series is the best one we've ever done," he says. "It's quite nice to have the studio audience back, because sitcoms need to be played to an audience. That way you can gauge the laughs better and pitch the performance. I think Doug is on excellent form with the scripts. We're getting rounds of applause in the middle of scenes, and you have to act your way through and deliver your lines while the audience are clapping. We've gotten big laughs, so we hope the viewers will find it as funny as the studio audience did."

As has become the norm for recent seasons, location shoots are a staple part of Red Dwarf VIII. "We've gone to some awful locations", Charles laughs. "Red Dwarf locations are never great! The pits of the world! We've being doing a lot of stuff in the old Guardian printing works. It's dirty, cold and cavernous. We also went to an airship hangar. It's the biggest building I've ever been in."

But then, when you're trying to fit a computer-generated T-Rex into the picture, an aircraft hangar is the perfect backdrop - at least for Red Dwarf.. The Jurassic Park inspired scene is just one of season eight's big set pieces.

"I get put through the mill this season, admits Charles. "There's a great fight scene we've just filmed, where I get thrown through walls and dive off trampettes. I like the physical stuff, because wouldn't it be a bit boring if you do the acting and then someone else comes along and has all the fun jumping around and flying on wires? That's the fun work! But it's weird working on green screen for the effects, because you don't know what's happening and you don't know what they're going to put in around you! But is looks better now. And there's a lot of CGI. Some of the models are fantastic."

Alongside Chris Barrie, Charles is probably the most well-known member of the Red Dwarf cast, with current roles on shows like The Bill, as well as a presenter gig on Robot Wars, perpetuating his on-screen visibility.

"I like to do serious acting," he explains. "I enjoyed doing The Governor in Ireland, and I played a teacher in The Bill recently... I never saw myself as a teacher! You know you're getting older when you get offered these kind of parts. It wasn't so long ago they were asking me to play sixth-formers!"

Largely missing from the previous season, Chris Barrie and his anally retentive hologram alter ego Arnold J Rimmer have made a quite literal return from the grave for season eight. Reconstructed along with Red Dwarf and her crew in the first episode, Rimmer is now alive and well - and still the same self-important jerk he was way back in season one. Barrie, whose time off from Red Dwarf saw him working on sitcoms The Brittas Empire for the Beeb and the so-so A Prince Among Men, is pleased to be back.

And it looks like he's been hit by the mellow vibe too.. In the past, he was quite anti about performing before a live audience. Not any longer.

"I suppose I'm a bit more `together' now," he says. "I used to panic like crazy before studio audiences - but now they're so good they're behind you on everything. Something's obviously happened to me; this has been the most comfortable series to do. We all work well together and I think it's probably the best series we've done... There's a good balance now between shoots with a studio audience and on location. And the episodes have a good balance between dialogue and special effects. It's all come together wonderfully. It feels like a completely new show."

So what pulled him back to this signature role after he seemed so intent on breaking out all those years ago?

"I thought that as the years go by it's increasingly unique to get this kind of script material on television, and I thought, `I just want to see it through.' In retrospect, having done six series and part of seven, I may as well stay right until the end, because it'll probably, certainly for the first part of my life, go down as the thing I was best known for. I really did enjoy the episodes I did during the seventh series and I wanted to get back into it - plus the vibe I got, from inside [the production] and the fans, was that the balance wasn't quite there."

How does he handle the back-to-basics approach of this new season, fitting in with Annet and the returning Lovett?

"It's great to have Norman back. Chloe is excellent. And the boys are the boys. We're all happy! This is our twelfth year on the show and we're all back together, so it's like Dad's Army in space, with make up to cover up all the grey! It's just a good feeling to be in such a successful show. If you approached a TV network with Red Dwarf today, they'd probably laugh at it and say, `Can we get Denise Van Outen in it?' It just wouldn't be made now!"

As to his contribution to season eight, Barrie promises more of the same "sophisticated" humour that we've come to expect from the show - Starbug flying into a rodent's bottom (prompting a gag about "driving while rat-assed), a seduction scene with Chloe Annet.. He admits that Rimmer's welcome return to Red Dwarf has added new legs to the show.

"Now we have the crew resurrected, we have a whole new avenue of opportunities for storylines and character development."