Chris Barrie on Red Dwarf's future after The Promised Land: "I think there's something..."

Speaking to RadioTimes.com to promote the DVD and Blu-ray release of The Promised Land, Rimmer actor Chris Barrie revealed that while there's no "official word" yet on Red Dwarf's future, there might be "something" in the works.

"I don’t think there’s any official word but I think from what he [series writer/director Doug Naylor] told me… well, I don’t know what I should say really, I think you’d better talk to [Doug] – but yeah, I think there’s something…" Barrie said.

He added: "There’s certainly the will from our side and rumour has it the will from other sides that are important in the whole process to do more. But there’s nothing concrete."

Back in April, Naylor admitted that he would "love to do more" feature-length specials after The Promised Land, with Barrie echoing these comments. "I think I’d probably like to do another special," he said. "When you do a special, it’s equivalent to three half-hours, whereas when you’re doing a series, it’s six half-hours and that does take it out of you.

"The shorter shoot time at the moment would suit me, so yeah, a special I think is preferable, and get to do a nice longer story again so you can explore more."

Red Dwarf: The Promised Land was the latest outing for the show on Dave, which revived the series back in 2009 after the first eight series had aired on the BBC.

Though its future is now once again looking bright, Barrie admitted that there was a time between the last BBC series in 1999 and the first Dave outing Red Dwarf: Back to Earth when he feared he'd played Rimmer for the last time.

"I always knew after series eight that Doug was keen to get it back on, whether as a feature film - I mean, that was the big idea in the early part of this century, to have a feature film," he recalled. "But you were never far away from some form of communication with the Red Dwarf office to say, ‘Guys, we’re nearly there on this, we’re nearly there on that’.

"Mind you, I suppose when we got to about 2007 or somewhere around there, 2006 or 2007, I thought to myself, 'We haven’t done the show for so long now, for eight years or whatever, it’s not going to happen again'. But then lo and behold in 2009 it kicked off again! And now I think we’re at the stage where there’s the possibility that they want to do more and more, so we’ll see!"
Red Dwarf: The Promised Land DVD and Blu-ray is available now