8 Amazing Red Dwarf Details You Never Noticed
3. Veiled Jabs Towards The BBC
Red Dwarf is, despite its mild TV rating, famous for its invention of the insult, "Smeg head".
That's not the only one it's known for, as the in-fighting between the crew has spawned a wealth of quotable insults over the years.
But one that might have flown over people's head is in the introductory Kryten episode. In an attempt to get him to break his programming, a frustrated Lister calls the subservient droid a "total Gwenlan".
To many, this is just a mild jab with no meaning behind it, but it's actually a thinly-veiled insult at the former Head of Comedy for the BBC, the late Gareth Gwenlan.
The reasoning behind this is that in the many years it took Red Dwarf to be launched, Gwenlan opposed the idea of a sitcom in space. Why?
Because "it didn't have a sofa", an oft-used trope in situational comedies.
As such, by proving him wrong by having a second series of the success of the first, this jab was a way of Grant and Naylor getting their point across.