The fifth series of Only Fools and Horses.... ran from August-October 1986, followed by a Christmas Special. Please join me as I celebrate the 40th anniversary of this run and rank it from worst to best...
We start off this article with another of the "not-really-a-proper-episode" entries, as the three leads appeared in character in 1986's Royal Variety Performance.
Recorded on 24th November and shown on the BBC on the 29th, it features the trio believing they're delivering hooky whisky to "Chunky", only to discover they're in the presence of royalty. It has to be assumed that "Chunky" was really the oft-mentioned but never seen "Monkey Harris", but they changed it for this appearance. This would seem to be because David Jason has to look out blindly into the distance and call out "is that you, Chunky?", before Rodney tells him he's looking in the wrong area and motions him to look up to the royal box. Even though Jason doesn't say the line to the Queen Mother, they perhaps didn't want to take the risk of it being interpreted that way, and it's misremembered as such in David Jason's autobiography My Life:
"We reached the point in the sketch where Rodney suddenly notices the presence of royalty in the royal box and, in a frozen panic, tries to draw my attention to it. I head over to that side of the stage, peer up blindly through the lights at where the Queen Mother is sitting, and deliver the line, 'Is that you, Chunky?' At this, to my astonishment, the Queen Mother graciously waved a hand in my direction. I nearly dried. Del Boy has been waved at by the Queen Mother. I knew she was going to be up there, but I didn't expect her to wave."
In During the war and other encounters, Buster Merryfield revealed that this performance was recorded while they were making the Christmas Special, A Royal Flush: "We were a late inclusion and were not given much time for rehearsals. John Sullivan wrote us a script, which we rehearsed in one of the hotel bedrooms in Salisbury after the day's shooting." A sad addition to his memories is the acknowledgement that: "My one regret was that my mother had not lived to see my proudest moment on stage. If only she could have been there, my night would have been complete".
It's a pretty amusing little skit, but as always, these "extras" are included for completeness' sake, and can't realistically be ranked among the episodes. Though if this one could be, it'd probably be ranked at least one or two places higher.
Del gets to hear the story of "Freddy the Frog", AKA Freddy Robdal, an old friend of his mother's. There's rumours that he was Rodney's real father, but Del is more interested in his stash of hidden gold...
A so-so 1987 Christmas special, this was the only new episode of Only Fools and Horses.... for two years, although obviously the BBC had crammed the gap with multiple repeats. It was 15th in the charts, with its potential audience split by having it air partially opposite ITV's Christmas edition of Blind Date, with both shows attracting 14.5 million viewers.
Producer Ray Butt moved to ITV after this special was made, and reportedly advised John Sullivan to leave the show here, feeling it had run its course. Although supposedly considered, a different direction for the series began to be filmed in November 1988, which would see the show reach even greater heights... at least in terms of viewers, if not quality.
A pregnant girl is found in the Nag's Head with nowhere to go, so she's taken back to the Trotter's flat. As she doesn't want to keep the baby, and Boycie and Marlene are having trouble conceiving, Del thinks he can see another money-making scheme.
Between this and the previous series, John Sullivan had debuted his fourth sitcom, Dear John..... (Yes, it also had oft-ignored ellipses in its title). Dear John.... is little remembered today, possibly because it only ran for two series (and a successful American remake), ending in 1987, without the mountain of repeats that OFAH enjoyed. Yet it was a big hit at the time, with both runs averaging 11.83 million viewers and 19th place in the charts, half of its 14 episodes in the Top 10.
It was a creditable show that depicted a lonely divorced life for John (Ralph Bates) but also had much "bigger", more sitcommy characters in a club for divorcees, including the classic wannabe cool man Kirk (Peter Blake). What this gives us is a show very much of "two halves", where a realistic character is depicted in his barren home life, struggling with limited access to his son, but then placed into a far less realistic – albeit entertaining – environment.
So what does all this have to do with Only Fools and Horses....? Well, series five sees OFAH go the same way as the Dear John.... format. It's where OFAH begins to change from something slightly off-beat, almost underground, and into much more of a mainstream sitcom. Astonishingly, there are many people who think the show "peaked" after this run, with series 6 and 7 a high point, rather than a decline.
Certainly, in terms of viewers, it was a peak. The show went from being popular to becoming a ratings monster, but to do so it had to scrape down to the lowest common denominator. Plots became more outlandish, the comedy became "obvious" and catchphrases and merchandise were to the forefront. If you think the two leads dressed as superheroes is comedy, then you'll get lots of laughs by what follows... but series five is the last series where it held a grip on anything remotely sophisticated.
The performances match this mentality... suddenly we're no longer seeing Del Boy on the screen, but "David Jason as the sitcom character Del Boy". John Challis as Boycie goes even further, now fully broad and over the top. Compare it with his first appearance in the first series, and it's a different world entirely.
Speaking of Boycie, then there's not much reference to what happened between him and Del in To Hull and Back last time, though Del does mention how Boycie has "tucked him up" in the past, and Boycie ends the episode saying he'll have revenge on Del for messing up the attempt at adoption.
A slightly odd instalment with Only Fools and Horses... meeting the world of soft porn. (Only Fans and Horses?) What makes it odd is not the racier subject matter but the fact that there are about three separate plot strands going on at once. And not all of them make sense.
The show actually begins with Trigger and Boycie, as Boycie talks about his problems with Marlene trying to get pregnant ("I tried to console her. I said 'Marlene, God didn't mean you to have kids, so shut up about it!' Doesn't seem to help.") and it's almost three minutes before Del Boy shows up.
Later we find out that Boycie is infertile, which is something we're supposed to laugh at. There are quotes from John Sullivan saying that people had complained, and that the joke is only supposed to be funny because Boycie is the target, but mocking someone's inability to have children seems a little too personal somehow. In actual fact, it was personal. In his second autobiography, 2012's Boycie & Beyond, John Challis discussed his own issues with having children and how the decision for this plot was a little close to home: "The irony of this hit me hard. I tried to think back to any time when I might inadvertently have referred to my own problems in procreation: if I hadn't, it was a bizarre and slightly painful coincidence."
In the meantime, Rodney has been given an arts grant and a camera by the council, but Mickey Pearce decides to use it to make a home-made porn video. This then ends up in Boycie's hands, who think it's one of his own videos, only to realise Mickey - his delivery man - is trying to undercut his market. This plot point actually doesn't hold up too badly, though can seem a bit laboured on first viewing. Perhaps the weirdest part of all this is that the guys settle in the back of The Nag's Head to watch it together... they even take Uncle Albert along with them. ("During the war we used to play soggy biscuit" - no, that's not an actual quote.)
It doesn't really add up or make a lot of sense, but then neither does the content of said movie. As Mickey has made the video in the flat, Rodney comes out of the kitchen halfway through and then runs back out. There's three problems here. The first is, why did Mickey leave this part of the shoot in the finished video? (Other than "because it's a sitcom", obviously). The second is that the direction Rodney turns and runs back into the kitchen is the opposite to the one where we originally saw him do it. Thirdly, as Mickey is over the other side of the room with his camcorder, and the shot of Rodney we saw in the "home made movie" was from our perspective, who was filming it? Was the BBC cameraman on Mickey's payroll?
The gang get dragged into a supermarket hold-up as "The Shadow" attempts to steal the safe takings. I would have been a young teenager when this episode came out, and it's the ideal time to watch it. Moments like Uncle Albert pretending to have a heart attack, Rodney appearing to reach for the gun, the sha-a-dow... all great memories. And good comedy... to someone who was still effectively a child.
But as with most of the rest of this fifth series, it's a reminder why some things are best left in the past. It's not that this episode is bad, but it's very sitcommy – particularly with the performance of Max Harvey as the Bank Manager, who gets a bit "Some Mothers Do ‘Ave ‘Em" in his portrayal.
Vas Blackwood still has a lot of love for the episode, and appears at conventions for the show. In YouTube interviews he has mentioned that it was Nicholas Lyndhurst who suggested the delivery of "sha-a-dow" in rehearsals, and describes the episode as being like a "theatre performance" as all of the studio work is on a single set.
The opening location sequences in a supermarket were filmed on a Sunday, as at the time supermarkets didn't open on that day. Other "of the time" moments include the audience laughing at the outrage of Blackwood's "Shadow" character openly shoplifting in order to attract attention. Back in 1986 the idea of someone overtly shoplifting was a piece of comedy... in 2026, sadly, it's somewhat commonplace.