How Red Dwarf Boosted My Confidence
I grew up in Liverpool here in the UK and like most people from Liverpool I had a local Liverpool accent. In my teenage years my parents moved the whole family to a town about 40 miles away and I started another high school. The town we moved to and the new kids in my new school didn't have the same accent and more often than not I found it difficult to make new friends as most people would either make fun of my accent and steer clear or on worse occasions try to bully me, purely through ignorant predujices. I grew up with something of a stigma attached to my accent and my self confidence ebbed away over the years. To this day I find it difficult that most people in the UK still judge people from Liverpool purely on their accent and only look further as a secondary thought. This is just my opinion based on years of real experience.
In my later teenage years I discovered Red Dwarf and straight away I loved it. The character €Lister' played by Craig Charles was my favourite as I could immediately relate to him. Like most teenagers I just wanted to be my own person, chill out, have fun and I despised €the establishment' as did Lister. Whats more Lister was from Liverpool and he was amongst the €core' characters and one that most people probably identified with. The success of Red Dwarf boosted my confidence. After all of the years of torment for being from Liverpool here was somebody that people all over the UK (and eventually the world) identified with even if the character was essentially a slacker.
The character of Lister was played brilliantly by Craig Charles. There is something tangibly great about the first two seasons of Red Dwarf that is absent from the later seasons. In fact all of the actors are brilliant and having read stories of their escapades off the set and then seeing the resulting tired expressions on their faces when being filmed it simply adds to the sense of realism in how fed up and tired of their situation those character would have been having spent years on board Red Dwarf and eventually the rest of your life with people you can't stand.
Over the years I feel these characters became parodies of these original people and lost that tangible greatness even though Red Dwarf remained great, it did lose some of that magic. There is a new series of Red Dwarf scheduled for 2012 and whilst the last few series have left a bitter taste in my mouth I hear good things for series 10. Apparently the writers are taking the script back to the original design and will try to recapture some of that lost €magic'. Personally, I have mixed feelings. I can't wait and yet I have low hopes. One thing I will never lose after 20 or so years of watching those original Red Dwarf episodes is that feeling I once had when I realised that I could be myself and it was ok. The people who didn't like me could take a hike, it was them with the issue and not me. I have a great life nowadays and have had 20 great years and I can honestly say that my connection to Red Dwarf had something to do with it.
In my later teenage years I discovered Red Dwarf and straight away I loved it. The character €Lister' played by Craig Charles was my favourite as I could immediately relate to him. Like most teenagers I just wanted to be my own person, chill out, have fun and I despised €the establishment' as did Lister. Whats more Lister was from Liverpool and he was amongst the €core' characters and one that most people probably identified with. The success of Red Dwarf boosted my confidence. After all of the years of torment for being from Liverpool here was somebody that people all over the UK (and eventually the world) identified with even if the character was essentially a slacker.
The character of Lister was played brilliantly by Craig Charles. There is something tangibly great about the first two seasons of Red Dwarf that is absent from the later seasons. In fact all of the actors are brilliant and having read stories of their escapades off the set and then seeing the resulting tired expressions on their faces when being filmed it simply adds to the sense of realism in how fed up and tired of their situation those character would have been having spent years on board Red Dwarf and eventually the rest of your life with people you can't stand.
Over the years I feel these characters became parodies of these original people and lost that tangible greatness even though Red Dwarf remained great, it did lose some of that magic. There is a new series of Red Dwarf scheduled for 2012 and whilst the last few series have left a bitter taste in my mouth I hear good things for series 10. Apparently the writers are taking the script back to the original design and will try to recapture some of that lost €magic'. Personally, I have mixed feelings. I can't wait and yet I have low hopes. One thing I will never lose after 20 or so years of watching those original Red Dwarf episodes is that feeling I once had when I realised that I could be myself and it was ok. The people who didn't like me could take a hike, it was them with the issue and not me. I have a great life nowadays and have had 20 great years and I can honestly say that my connection to Red Dwarf had something to do with it.
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