A Comedy On This Day: Only Fools & Horses - Sleeping Dogs Lie (21 March 1985)

 These mid-eighties OFAH episodes seem to have left much less of a lasting impression upon me than what came before and after. I think this one is about as weak as the original series got, pivoting around a reversal of expectations which is a bit too similar to other episodes that had more diverting situations and stronger supporting characters. My chief problem with it is that the initial appearance of Marlene's enormous Great Dane dog (whom the brothers have agreed to mind) set up a pleasurable anticipation of enjoyable canine larks which was then disappointed, but perhaps that's just me!

 It's a bit of a letdown after Strained Relations. Where that episode had the exciting sense of having to be written and produced from scratch almost overnight, here Uncle Albert is very clearly just Grandad's understudy, and it makes me feels a bit sad when I start to imagine how Lennard Pearce might have performed it. Its not really helped by the occasional additional line reminding us that the Uncle is an old sailor, as these never seem to arise naturally in the dialogue.

A Comedy On This Day: Only Fools & Horses - Strained Relations (28 February 1985)

 I hadn't seen this for over 30 years, but I remembered it very well. The production turnaround for this series was absolutely incredible. Lennard Pearce died on 15 December 1984 and somehow within two and a half months new scripts had been written marking the death of a much-loved character, a new replacement character had been conceived and cast, and these new episodes had been organised, recorded, edited and broadcast. Under these circumstances - and with the production team still in mourning - it’s miraculous that this was even halfway good. It’s actually considerably more than that, although probably not the first episode of Only Fools & Horses that many people would pick up first if they were looking for enjoyment.

 The most interesting parts are the more purely dramatic moments between the brothers, comparing their reactions to the death without their dialogue being required to do much heavy plot lifting. Oddly the thing that really made me laugh this episode was just watching a prop. After the initial emotional resonance of Del cooking a sausage and mash meal for Rodney ("No. I can't eat that. Its not like how Grandad used to make it. Its nice") the food itself is twice used again to signify other things, first being pushed away by a hung-over Uncle Albert and then, congealed, marking the passage of time into the next morning.

 I've never rewatched Only Fools and Horses systematically, and have seen repeats of the early series a lot more often, so I've never really thought much about Uncle Albert in the same way that I have about the brothers. He generally seems to just be there, doing useful things to advance the story. But - especially considering the circumstances in which it was written - his initial appearance does a good job of establishing a distinctive character: The ancient mariner, teller of tall tales, a shifty cadge but someone probably ultimately benign. I'll be interested to see if any episode ever turns up which really develops or complicates the character.

A Comedy On This Day: Only Fools & Horses - Stage Fright (13 January 1991)

 Oddly, I haven't seen any of this late series since it was first broadcast. The gap of 28 years helped today - I could remember that the pay-off was funny, but couldn't remember what it actually was! I'm much more responsive to the supper-club cabaret setting of this episode than I was when I last saw it at 18. These days, even though it's a joke, the Engelbert/Tom Jones act of 'Tony Angelino, The Singing Dustman' is just the sort of thing that I know I'd really enjoy. This one appearance must be the one thing that Philip Pope is best known for, not Who Dares Wins or writing 'The Chicken Song'.

 I recollect this second series of 50-minute episodes as feeling less successful than the 1989 one. I remember watching them with my mother, and her complaining that, "this programme is much better when they're being funny, rather than all this business with their wives".