Red Dwarf seasons 1 to 8 land new streaming home in the UK and are available to watch now

BBC sitcom Red Dwarf has landed a new home in the UK – with Netflix users now able to get in on the action.

The long-running comedy, which follows a group of misfit space travellers on board the titular spaceship, initially ran from 1988 to 1999, before being rebooted from 2009 to 2020.

All of the first eight seasons, which aired on BBC Two and form the show's original run, are now available on Netflix UK.

The streaming service announced the sitcom’s arrival on social media with the classic reference: “Attention smegheads!”

The series has run for 12 seasons in total, as well as the feature-length 2020 special The Promised Land.

Since the show’s launch, Red Dwarf has expanded beyond TV to include audiobooks, novels and graphic novels that continue to this day, despite the series no longer running.

In 2025, it was revealed that plans to bring back the series for a new special were scrapped by UKTV.

Despite this, Doug Naylor, co-creator of the show alongside Rob Grant, said last year that he was continuing to write scripts set within the Red Dwarf world.

Grant sadly passed away earlier this year, with his final project – prequel novel Red Dwarf: Titan alongside collaborator Andrew Marshall – released posthumously in July.

The story tracked Dave Lister (Craig Charles) and Arnold Rimmer (Chris Barrie) in their lives up to the main events of the show.

In Grant's own words, the pair "get a message from the far future warning them that all realities are going to collapse unless they do something about it" – leaving them to save the timeline as they know it.

By the time the series starts, Lister has become the last living human after three million years in suspended animation, while Rimmer has become a hologram version of his former self.

Watch Doug Naylor and Danny John-Jules reflect on Red Dwarf’s beginnings with Radio Times back in 2023 below:

Red Dwarf is available to stream on BBC iPlayer and Netflix now.

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Authors

Tilly Pearce is a freelance TV journalist whose coverage ranges from reality shows like Love Is Blind to sci-fi shows like Fallout. She is an NCTJ Gold Standard accredited journalist, who has previously worked as Deputy TV Editor (maternity cover) at Digital Spy, and Deputy TV & Showbiz Editor at Daily Express US.