Despite a slight improvement in the viewing figures, the series still struggled to catch on with the public during this early run, and cancellation was a serious possibility. You can buy the second series online via Amazon. Please join me as I rank the second series from worst to best...
Del thinks he's in to make some cash when he finds a rare urn at the house of Trigger's gran. Unfortunately it contains the ashes of Trigger's grandad, so Del and Rodney go on a mission to dispose of it.
This isn't a bad episode - none of this run is - but it does feel a little juvenile in places, and the whole plot a bit of "filler" to make up the run. It's a shame, because it starts well with some funny lines from Trigger, but once the narrative switches over to the three regulars it seems to get a little flat.
In looking over the viewing figures for this second run, we're again stuck with the problem of availability. The Broadcasters Audience Research Board (BARB) were only publishing the Top 10 per channel, which is fine if OFAH was making the BBC1 Top 10, but this was the only episode that did.
Some archive pages on the BBC site list viewing figures (an average of 8.71 million for the run, not counting the Christmas Special) but the problem here is that the BBC's own figures may not match what BARB recorded. This particular edition has a listed viewership of 9.8 million on the BBC site, but BARB had it listed as 8th on BBC1 that week with 10.1 million.
The figures were an improvement, but were still below the average for the timeslot. The BBC had asked John Sullivan to come up with a new sitcom idea after the first series, not being particularly interested in a second run, and the viewing figures for the run didn't really make them pleased they'd given it another chance. As with the 1981 series, 1982 ended with the future of the show still in doubt.
Shown on the 30th December, this was the last Only Fools Christmas Special not to be actually shown on Christmas Day, barring multi-part Christmas Specials. In it, a downbeat Del meets the Heather of the title, a woman who has been abandoned by her husband, and Del sees Heather and her son as the start of a new family.
It's a very offbeat episode, as Rodney and Grandad scarcely feature at all, and the material they're given isn't very strong. While the show did get incredibly schmaltzy in its later years, the earlier runs were tempered by a strong line of cynicism. Except not here, where an overbearingly "cutesy" montage with Del and the son feels like humour from another show, at least for this period.
There's some decent stuff towards the end, where Del expresses feelings of abandonment from his father leaving, but it doesn't really all fit together. Del and Heather spend six weeks together over the course of the episode, but by the end she just sees the relationship as platonic.
The BBC's own archive pages cite an audience of 9.3 million on first broadcast for this edition.
Rodney causes panic for Del and Grandad when he reveals he's started dating a policewoman.
Ranked much lower on rewatch than I expected it to be, the scene where Rodney's girlfriend enters the flat and Del tries desperately to hide all of the stolen goods is quite amusing, but the scenes before this are a little uninvolving.
Maybe it's because it doesn't really flow all that well. Rodney starts the episode in a mood because of some dating issue, then Del tells Grandad how Rodney failed at asking out a policewoman while she was conducting an arrest. This would logically lead to a "That's where you're wrong..." from Rodney, but it never happens. Instead, Rodney brings it up in the following scene where they've gone for some breakfast at the Old Oak Café, and Rodney is suddenly in a happy mood even though it's just the next scene.
The Café, incidentally, introduces us to a new character, Sid, who would show up as a minor character serving food. His next appearance was in Christmas Trees, while he'd be picked up again as a character in a 1985 Christmas special, before making a further eight appearances up to 1996. When the series came back for three Christmas specials in the early 2000s they had the character of Sid take over as the landlord of the Nag's Head, but that's all in the future. There's not really a lot to say about Sid, because it's a minor character with a couple of lines in odd episodes.
Perhaps one of the issues with this edition is that it's very "performative". With an active studio audience, the cast are only too well aware of their presence, and some of the actions are exaggerated. David Jason normally gives a good effort as Del Boy, but look at how he hams up his "shaking hand" when getting the drinks with Rodney. Or a gag where a load of stolen cutlery falls out of his sleeve in Sid's café. The start of it is fine, but after the initial gag, you can clearly see Jason waggling his fingers to make more fall out.
It's still quite racy for BBC1, with Del and Grandad expressing how much they dislike the police, and Rodney making a reference to bestiality. Also of note for trivia is that this one doesn't have a warning for racial terms, yet Del casually makes reference to a "sp**" restaurant. The slur was repeated in the series three episode Homesick.
The most-discussed episode of the Grandad years, where Del talks himself into a chandelier repairing job in a posh manor house, only for things to go wrong.
In 2015 UK Gold showed "The Favourites", a countdown of the favourite episodes of the series, as chosen by fans of the show. This edition came second, just behind the 1989 special Jolly Boys' Outing. Not unexpectedly, most of the Top 10 were what could be dubbed "crowd pleasers".
So, is this the second best episode of Only Fools and Horses....? No. It's not even the second best episode of this second series. It's okay, and was probably hilarious on first viewing, but it's an episode heavily based around a "twist" ending. Once you've seen said twist, it's diminishing returns.
Now, other episodes in the show - even in this same run - had "twist" endings. But they had material to go around it, so that even when you knew what was coming, you could still have a laugh with it. And this episode isn't awful by any means. It's just very mundane and "sitcommy" compared to the standard of the series at the time. The plot is even initiated by Del Boy overhearing a conversation, like a Peckham Terry Medford.
Del has a new scheme to make some money when he buys some stolen paint off Trigger and gets Rodney to paint the interior of a Chinese restaurant with it.
While the painting of the restaurant is the core plot, it's left loose enough to allow for character moments. In particular, there's a long scene in a graveyard where Rodney tells Del he feels "cheated" as he never got to know their mother. It gives viewers chance to spend time with the two brothers as they discuss both their resentments and affection for each other, and, at over 8 minutes long, it's a nice scene that doesn't feel the need to hurry itself. This isn't an episode that's into out-and-out laughs (though it certainly has its moments) but is more character building.
Interestingly, the episode has a warning label on ITVX reading "Contains some offensive racial language of the time". As the guest character is a Chinese businessman and the episode's title is a punning reference to yellow paint/a xenophobic term, then your mind may instantly go towards this as the target, and be on the lookout for Chinese-based derision.
The series would actually go on to use a derogatory term for Chinese people on five separate occasions, yet all five instances occurred during 1986-1987. There are some small cracks here and there, such as Del claiming a cat is on the restaurant menu (he later admits he's just winding Rodney up) or telling Mr. Chin to keep his chin up. There's also a pun on ciao/chow mein. But, while not strictly "PC" by 2026 standards, it wouldn't really qualify as "offensive racial language".
That moment comes with Del using a derogatory term for the traveller community, claiming that the other graves in the churchyard look like "monuments to the unknown g**o".