Only Fools and Horses star Tessa Peake-Jones has said modern sitcoms should be as heartwarming as the BBC sitcom – but the series almost tarnished its own loving reputation back when it first aired.
In a new interview, the actor, who played Del Boy’s wife Racquel, said Only Fools’s enduring appeal is down to the writing having “so much heart”.
She told The i Paper. “Some of the comedy today seems to be having a go at other people – it can be quite cruel in a way that I don’t find funny personally.”
While Only Fools and Horses featured jokes made by entrepreneurial market trader Del Boy (Sir David Jason) at the expense of his hapless brother Rodney (Nicholas Lyndhurst), one controversial episode was “banned” for featuring a scene too “cruel” to air.
Creator John Sullivan disliked “A Royal Flush” so much that he allegedly stopped it from being broadcast for almost 20 years.
In the 1985 Christmas special, Del Boy (Sir David Jason) gatecrashes a party held by the new love interest of his brother Rodney (Nicholas Lyndhurst) – a rich daughter of a duke – and ruins their burgeoning romance during a climactic dinner scene.
According to the documentary Secrets & Scandals of Only Fools and Horses, Sullivan felt this episode was not in keeping with Del Boy’s typically lovable personality and asked to change it two decades later.
Editor Chris Wadsworth said that it was “quite a cruel, dark episode”, adding that Sullivan branded it “not a good” one.
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“Some 20 years later, he said, ‘Can we do anything to take out Del being nasty?’” Wadsworth revealed.
Speaking about the original version of the episode, TV producer Richard Latto added: “The original where Del Boy is being quite cruel to Rodney is a hard watch.”
Previously, episode director Ray Butt, who died in 2013, said he thought Del Boy “went a bit over the top” and “turned too nasty and lost his warmth” during the dinner scene.
Jason, 86, agreed, stating: “Perhaps that scene wasn’t as good as it could have been.”
The episode would have certainly sat badly with fans of the sitcom, which followed the escapades of the Trotter family, who still send Peake-Jones and her surviving cast members letters.
Peake-Jones said: “We still all get letters from teenagers just discovering it. It’s amazing that people are still watching.”
The actor, who stars in the new Southwark Playhouse production Invisible Me, recently revealed that the cast members used to be overcome with pressure before shooting scenes in front of a live audience.
“If people had seen us backstage before the show, they’d have seen people pacing up and down the corridors with nerves, including David and Nick,” she told The Express.
“We cared so much, and we wanted to get it right, but one slip-up of a word could ruin that laugh.”
