Doug Naylor

Life and career

Naylor was born in Manchester, Lancashire, England, and studied at the University of Liverpool. In the mid-1980s, Naylor wrote two regular comedy sketch shows for BBC Radio 4 entitled Cliché and Son of Cliché, as well as Wrinkles for Radio 4. These sketch shows were scripted by Naylor along with another writer, Rob Grant. This writing partnership was successful with Naylor and Grant going on to co-write and produce numerous British television series throughout the 1980s and 1990s. These included programmes such as Comic Relief, Spitting Image, and The 10 Percenters.

The collaborations between Grant and Naylor have often used the pseudonym Grant Naylor. They wrote the British science fiction comedy television series Red Dwarf under this name. Their earlier radio sketch shows formed the basis for the show; Chris Barrie starred in both those and Red Dwarf.

Some time between the airing of the sixth series of Red Dwarf in 1993, and the writing of the seventh series in 1996, Rob Grant ended his partnership with Naylor after revealing he was tired of it and that he intended to quit and pursue other projects. The pair announced their professional split and cited creative and professional differences, along with Grant's desire to move onto new shows.

With this split, it appeared as though Red Dwarf was finished; other obstacles included the fact that Chris Barrie was tied up starring in The Brittas Empire and the other star of Red Dwarf, Craig Charles, was in prison awaiting trial. However, when Charles was acquitted and Barrie became available for a few episodes a seventh series finally went ahead. Doug Naylor went on to write the seventh and eighth series of Red Dwarf mostly on his own (70% of the series by his own estimate), although some episodes were co-written with Paul Alexander and Kim Fuller, and one episode co-written with one of the cast members, Robert Llewellyn.

In 2007, Naylor and Grant Naylor Productions were primarily focused on the production of the DVD releases of Red Dwarf and the postulated movie.

In 2008 it was announced by Grant Naylor Productions that Red Dwarf would return to TV in the form of four half-hour specials for the digital channel Dave. The episodes were broadcast over the Easter weekend, 2009, and comprising a three-part special (20 minutes each), Back to Earth, and a behind-the-scenes "Making of" Back to Earth. Naylor wrote the scripts for the three new episodes and also directed them. Back to Earth received record ratings for freeview channel Dave.

In 1994, an episode of Red Dwarf from the sixth series, "Gunmen of the Apocalypse", won an International Emmy Award in the Popular Arts category, and in the same year the series was also awarded "Best BBC Comedy Series" at the British Comedy Awards. The series attracted its highest ratings, of over eight million viewers, during the eighth series in 1999.

In 2011, Dave commissioned Naylor to write a new six episode series of Red Dwarf, later entitled Red Dwarf X. The series won the Royal Television Society's award for Best Special Effects, presented in 2013.

Naylor formed Three Feet Productions with his son Richard in 2014, and wrote and directed a one-off comedy for BBC 1, entititled Over To Bill, starring Hugh Dennis, Neil Morrissey and Helen George and produced by Richard Naylor.

In 2015/16 Naylor wrote and directed 12 more episodes of Red Dwarf for UKTV (Dave). The first six (Series XI) were broadcast from September 2016 and Series XII will be broadcast from September 2017. Both series were a Baby Cow production with Richard Naylor and Kerry Waddell as Producers. Naylor has now written or co-written all 73 episodes of Red Dwarf.

Personal life

Naylor is married to Casting Director Linda Glover and they have two sons, one of whom (Richard) is a television producer, the other a doctor. Naylor has a prosthetic leg due to a road accident when he was seven years old.