A Nation of Red Dwarf Fans
Cult British science fiction comedy series Red Dwarf has a surprisingly large number of fans in the Czech Republic. Trpaslicon – adapted from the Czech name for the show, Červený trpaslík – is an annual Prague festival that has been running since 2003 and which celebrates not only Red Dwarf but all things Britcom and Brit sci-fi. Dominik Jůn went to visit.
One Saturday in March a local school in Prague’s Chodov district was converted into a kind of convention centre hosting Trpaslicon 2025, celebrating the British television series Red Dwarf and more. Petr Rauner, aka “Rausek”, is one of the organisers:
“Red Dwarf is really popular in the Czech Republic. We have one of the biggest fandoms for the series in the world. As far as I know, the three biggest fandoms for the series are in Britain, obviously, Japan, and then the Czech Republic. The show is popular because British humour is very close to Czech humour and Czech people love British sitcoms.”
Red Dwarf started back in 1988 and centred around the character of Lister, a lowly slobbish Liverpudlian “Scouser” mining ship employee, who wakes up three million years in the future and is forced into a kind of Odd Couple situation with a hologram of his former colleague, Arnold J. Rimmer. Also on board is creature who evolved from Lister’s cat, and a talking computer called Holly (later joined by the robot Kryten).
The show began airing in the Czech Republic in 1999 as a late night treat on the station ČT2 and gained an immediate cult following.
According to Jiří Charvát, of fan site cervenytrpaslik.cz, the dubbing of Red Dwarf is considered “one of the best dubbings ever” (despite its occasional changes in the intended meaning). I asked Rausek whether one of the other reasons for the popularity of Red Dwarf might be the character of Lister’s similarity to the famous Good Soldier Švejk of Czech literature:
“Exactly. I think that if you compare it, yes, Lister is like a British Švejk from the future, whereas Švejk himself is from the First World War.”
Back in 2019, on the occasion of receiving his knighthood from the Queen, British Monty Python legend Michael Palin singled out Czech humour when asked the question, “Who are the funniest people in the world?” by Channel 5 news:
“Well, they just have a feeling that everything is up for laughter, which the British have as well, and which some other countries just don’t have. There’s a laughter ceiling in certain countries. But not here and not in the Czech Republic for some reason.”
During a recent 2024 visit to the Prague Comic-Con convention, Rimmer actor Chris Barrie reflected on the nature of British comedy – with its obvious parallels to Czech humour:
“I think we’re all losers in the show. Rimmer is definitely a loser, Lister is a loser – we’re all losers just trying to cope. And I think there is something in the British ‘small person’ going back to Steptoe and Son and all the great British comedies, Only Fools and Horses, Fawlty Towers – they are all about losers essentially, who are struggling with something...”
Rausek has agreed to show me around one or two of the events taking place here today. We’re walking down a corridor now.
“As you can see, events are divided up into various rooms. This room here is for our thematic activities.”
And it is not just Red Dwarf, is it? Because your online programme underscores that you also celebrate science fiction and British comedy.
“Yes, at the start, we had just Red Dwarf. But from 2006, we had a sci-fi and fantasy room, where we cover all of these in general, not just British. And we also have a Britcom room that covers all the various British comedies. And then we decided to have a special room just for Doctor Who, because this is also one of the big TV shows and there is a huge fandom in the Czech Republic for Doctor Who as well.”
One of the attendees, a woman named Ladislava, explained her love of Red Dwarf:
“I love Rimmer. I think he is a really realistic character; I really believe that!”
Do you find a similarity of this show with Czech humour?
“Yes.”
Why is that? Is it something about making the best of a dark situation and mocking authority figures? Is there a Švejk-ian aspect to it?
“Yes, I think that this is a similarity between Britain and the Czech Republic, that we kind of understand this type of humour. And it is about not having respect for anything, making fun of everything, and, like you said, and always making the best out of a dark situation.”
Two other attendees came dressed as medieval knights.
“I’m Arthur and she’s the Black King.”
So this is Monty Python and the Holy Grail.
“Yes. We love British dry humour. It’s not as dry as it thinks it is, but it is seeing the funny side and thinks that it is dry.”
So what about that apparent similarity between Czech and British humour? I asked Professor Pavel Pospěch, a sociologist at Masaryk University, for his take on what Czechs find funny – and why:
“The one thing about Czech humour is that it is rather plebeian, if you like. It is sort of anti-elitist. If you ask Czechs for a summary of their own history, then they will explain it as a series of periods when they were ruled by somebody else – by the Hapsburgs as part of Austria-Hungary, then you had the period of German occupation, then the period of Soviet occupation. And Czechs didn’t have their own elites, so I think that Czechs have evolved this mechanism, this humour, which makes fun of the elites, because this was their way of coping. And I think this remains true until this day.”
One other question came to mind: how could the humour of a former imperialist power be so similar to the humour of a perennial imperial subject? Pavel Pospěch again:
“The other thing about the Czechs – and this may also be the case for the British – is a very strong emphasis on the natural against the artificial. And there have also been common targets of humour, for example the Germans. And whatever the Czechs perceive as bureaucratic, or artificial, or smells of rules and procedures is something they love to ridicule and make fun of. Because the Czechs see themselves as very straightforward and down-to-earth people. So this could be something that may be common to the Czechs and the British as well.”
Why are you attending today’s Trpaslicon?
Sabina: “...We really wondered about the food, because in the show it is kind of legendary – you know, the chicken vindaloo.”
Yes, Lister’s famous love of curries. So they replicate those here at the festival?
“Yeah. And in the cafeteria, they also have the iconic toasts from the toaster...”
Yes, of course, the talking toaster.”
Rausek, have any of the actors or behind-the-scenes people from Red Dwarf attended Trpaslicon?:
“What we really like about Trpaslicon is that it is really small, just in a school. We don’t have any ambitions to be a huge convention with 3,000 people and a lot of sponsors and so on. We decided that our limit is 500 people...even if we did it, we would never invite them here to Trpaslicon, because when something so popular would come here it would completely change the feeling of the festival.”
It would create a media circus, you mean?
“Yeah, and a lot of people would want to come and we would have to charge them a lot of money and so on. In the meantime, Comic-Con Prague started to be here, and one of their main guests is always someone from Red Dwarf.”
