Is this the best Christmas Only Fools and Horses ever?
From the Vicar of Dibley to Porridge – festive episodes of British sitcoms are being dished out on TV channels quicker than smutty one-liners from pantomime dames.
Mother Brown’s Boys, The Good Life, My Family and Keeping Up Appearances – the list of seasonal sitcom make-overs goes on.
My favourite Christmas comedy episodes come from Only Fools and Horses. For the uninitiated, it is about the Trotter brothers – market traders Derek and Rodney endeavouring to go from selling hooky gear to being overnight millionaires. They are played by David Jason, Del, and Nicholas Lyndhurst, Rodders.
The early series featured Leonard Pearce as their grandad. When he died in real life, Buster Merryfield joined the cast as the boys’ Uncle Albert, an old sea dog.
Early Yuletide offerings include Christmas Crackers, Diamonds Are For Heather and Thicker Than Water, when Del and Rodder’s dad turns up looking for a billet.
Lamenting Reggie’s return, Del says: “Some people get wise men bearing gifts – we get a wally with a disease.” It’s a Christmas cracker one-liner and, with writer John Sullivan’s penchant for pathos, sums up the Trotters’ life experience.
The later episodes – sorry fans – If They Could See Us Now, Fatal Extraction and Sleepless in Peckham lack sparkle. Time On Our Hands and Mother’s Nature’s Son being exceptions.
My favourite to top my favourites, To Hull and Back. The title was a play on the Audie Murphy 1955 war film To Hell and Back.
It is the fourth Christmas special episode of the BBC sitcom and was first screened on Christmas Day 1985. It was the first feature-length edition of the show and there was not a piece of tinsel or turkey in sight.
Yet, it is my favourite plot – Del is asked by second-hand car dealer Boycie and his associate Abdul to smuggle diamonds from Amsterdam back to London. For which he will be paid £15,000.
Already on the trail of the smugglers is Del’s nemesis Chief Inspector Roy Slater, a menacing cameo for the great Jim Broadbent. The sense of jeopardy is heightened to fever pitch.
Will Del Boy get to Holland and back with the diamonds – valued at £150,000 – put them in Boycie’s hands and get his £15,000 reward under Slater’s nose and avoid capture?
Where does Hull come into it? What part do Denzil and his lorry play?
Watch the whole 90 minutes of a comedy masterclass to find out. Sullivan does not miss a Trotter trope in a script that is vibrant with one-liners, slapstick and canny observation. It is clever and full of thrills and spills. It never sags or lingers on a scene a second too long.
Del’s penchant for cocktails and ‘iffy’ jewellery, Sid’s cafe, Rodders’ lacklustre love-life and Albert’s Navy background all come into play.
The Trotters’ trip by boat to Holland shows Albert, as we all suspected long ago, knows as much about sailing a ship as Del knows about horology. He thinks the John Harrison H6 ‘lesser’ watch, which sells for £6.2 million in Time On Their Hands, is a “Victorian egg timer”.
Rodder’s suggests steering the ship by the stars and recommends that Albert look for the Bear. He responds with: “Where is it?” Del Boy says: “It’s up there, standing on the Glacier Mint.” For those of us of a certain age, that is genius.
Plonkers, wallies, fried food, the Nag’s Head, Denzil’s mis-marriage to Corinne, Boycie’s underhand car dealing, Slater’s nastiness and Del’s Boys misuse of foreign languages – Ajax, the name of a Dutch football team is used as a mode of greeting and apology – abound.
All this comes together to make for the perfect episode of Only Fools and Horses. To Hull and Back has never been bettered, though Dates and The Jolly Boys’ Outing come close.
The darker A Royal Flush is best avoided. Sullivan banned it from being repeated. I have it –with every episode from all series – on DVD.
Only Fools and Horses is also on Gold. Pour yourself an Italian stallion, tequila sunset, Malibu and cherryade or non-alcoholic lager top, sit back and enjoy. Cushty.