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Only Fools and Horses
1981 · TV series · 30 min episodes · 7 seasons
Created by John Sullivan
Only Fools and Horses.... Is a British sitcom created and written by John Sullivan. Seven series were originally transmitted on BBC One from 1981 to 1991, with sixteen sporadic Christmas specials aired until 2003. In working-class Peckham in south-east London, ambitious market trader Derek 'Del Boy' Trotter and his younger half-brother Rodney, explore their highs and lows in life, in particular their attempts to get rich. Initially not an immediate hit and receiving little promotion early on, it later achieved consistently high ratings, and the 1996 episode "Time on Our Hands" (originally billed as the series finale) holds the record for the biggest UK audience for a sitcom episode, attracting 24.3 million viewers. The series bears a significant influence on British culture, contributing several words and phrases to the English language.
5 positive13 neutralfrom 18 commenters
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18 comments on Hacker News
"In Britain, the term Trigger's broom is sometimes used, in reference to a line from the sitcom Only Fools and Horses in which road sweeper Trigger says that he has used the same broom for 20 years, with it only needing 17 new heads and 14 new handles in that time."
This is because it served as an accidental documentary and/or field guide for many micro entrepreneurs trying to break out during the autumn years of communist Yugoslavia.
The feeling lingers up to present - many still associate the word "entrepreneur" with at least slightly shady dealings.
If you work in tech in the valley, imagine how easily you could relate to Sillicon Valley (the show). It's the same for Only Fools and Horses for the 90s-00s Balkans.
"It was, as she sees it, a collective meltdown in a country previously known for stability."
Actually I'd argue repression not stability, I've come to view the UK having lived here all my life as one of the most scientifically advanced repressive nations on the planet, just look at the work of Dominic Cummings, or the police or the military! I know the Germans are often portrayed as being very rigid, but I honestly think that title should go to the UK.
And you have to thank the BBC for the nations love of the Arthur Daley character from the TV series Only Fools and Horses, which Nigel Farage emulated so eloquently.
Surely the BBC et al should take a bow for the part its played in enabling Brexit in a Little Britain Vicky Pollard kind of way?
I mean I've never seen so much of the British Press from all political corners seemingly united in their direct and indirect promotion of Brexit with their Johnny Foreigner bashing that gave rise to UKIP.
Anyway nothing appears to have changed for over 50 years when reading this [1].
The UK ruling elite have a stubbornness and pig headedness that rival the Taliban in Afghanistan!
So I'm sure nothing will have changed in the next 50 or 100 years time.
[1] https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/cabinetpapers/alevelstudies/1960-radicalisation.htm
They already tried it and it didn't go well. I remember it because I had a meeting with the man who was running the trial service. Granted this was a few years ago now, but you also have to remember that "the BBC" isn't allowed to do this, only it's commercial entity "BBC Worldwide" can, due to the way the BBC is funded.
Many of the best shows are co-produced with other broadcasters from countries, which means the BBC doesn't have the global rights for them. Also a decent proportion of BBC content is independently produced, which also means the BBC doesn't have the rights to that content. Lastly, the contracts for performing rights were often written before the concept of streaming, so you may have to go back to each credited performer and get the rights to distribute the show online. This has impacted DVD releases before, in one instance the BBC had to actually wait for someone to die before they could release a DVD box set, because one actor in just one episode refused to sign an updated agreement. So the list of content that's actually available is much smaller than you might think.
Maintaining a paid archive of "long tail" content has long been said to be the way forward. You can monetise that huge library of content from your past, right? Actually, it turns out that people don't actually watch that long tail. Outside the top, recent content, you'll get maybe a handful of people watching the archive each week. The cost of maintaining that archive online is non-zero and because the content is largely "cold", in terms of streaming, delivery of the archive costs you more than the popular content people are actually watching. And if you hadn't noticed, streaming services aren't renowned for being profitable in the first place.
Oh, and playback performance for cold assets is worse than fresh content. So watching an old episode of 'Only Fools and Horses' in Indonesia will have relatively poor streaming performance without putting in significant global investment. That investment being difficult to justify.
It's cheaper to syndicate the popular shows (old and new) to the other streaming services and see what gets watched.
Credentials: >20 years in broadcast/media technology, now working in a senior role at a major streaming service.
There are extremely few comedy shows I really enjoy: Arrested Development, Curb you Enthusiasm, Fawlty Towers, Only Fools and Horses, Malcolm in the Middle - and Seinfeld. I think they all have something in common: while they all offer plenty of easy-to-digest but clever short-term jokes, they regularly feature completely unexpected long-term jokes, to great effect.
Seinfeld stands out because they typically achieve this across storylines. A great example (spoiler alert) is Kramer's golfing vs. George's lying in "The Marine Biologist", where the literal act of revealing that the joke was actually a storyline collision got the biggest laugh in the show's history. They sometimes even did it across episodes, for example George's job as a hand model. I think this is one of the main reasons Seinfeld nearly topped the 2013 WGA ranking of the best written TV shows [0].
Larry David became the master of this technique during the 3rd year of Seinfeld, and he further perfected it in "Curb".
[0] https://www.wga.org/writers-room/101-best-lists/101-best-written-tv-series/list
> Now I'm in Austria and the "content" on TV channels is just ridiculous.
small demography of 9MM, so the only way to differentiate themselves against bigger German channels is to produce content specifically for that niche. Shows in Austria/CH only value-add are a "local dialect" of actors, or setting the plot/story within Austria/CH. Other than that it's either a poor local copy of German shows (which are often copies of international shows).
Having been spoiled by British quality TV for a couple of decades I'd say the BBC is an incredible high yardstick, impossible to reach not just for Austria, but there is nothing like it in DACH.
One of my biggest annoyance by far is the dubbing of OC into German. They have only a handful of voice-over actors who they rotate for these jobs so the lead-act of every other movie has the same voice[0].
As a child I thought one of the reasons Eddie Murphy was so funny was because of his incredibly high-pitched voice[1]. Once people sit through the dubbed content most of the meaning and jokes are lost.
While other Europeans grow up watching things like Father Ted, Only Fools and Horses and such classics in their __original__ language, I have not 1 German-native friend who is able to follow English language on TV (even there are subs) and they will never get to appreciate other excellent shows like Norseman, Gomorrah, Suburra, because it's "too difficult to read the subs" and they didn't have to since they were kids.
[0] Dennis Schmidt-Foß has given voices to Ryan Reynolds, Chris Evans, Eddie Murphy and others. In fact the situation with E Murphy was so bad/ridiculous that they decided to give him a _new_ voice!! That's right the same person now has a different voice and nobody thinks that's odd.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OKGAOM0mAOo
That was an episode of Only Fools & Horses:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mother_Nature%27s_Son_(Only_Fools_and_Horses)
The UK has had sitcoms on the radio since the 50s and TV since the 60s, when there weren't many channels. I think it's more down to what the controllers of the channels want to put on it. Sitcoms can be extremely popular - Only Fools and Horses was watched by around 40% of the UK population at its peak.
I am going to suggest you watch a few episodes of 'Only Fools and Horses'. It's an 80s sitcom set in Peckham, South London. The show is practically considered a national treasure in the UK and most people who grew up in the UK are very familiar with it.
The reason I suggest it is that it showcases a very particular dialect of British English that many people struggle with (even native English speakers) if they aren't familiar with it. The show was so popular in fact that many modern colloquial British English phrases/words can trace their appearance to this show, not because the show invented them, but because the show exposed so many people to this dialect.
Some examples of words/phrases popularised by OFAH: dipstick, wally, cushty, lovely jubbly.
See http://www.bbc.co.uk/comedy/onlyfools/lingo/ for more.
If you want to master modern British English, check it out. It's also hilariously funny.
For any UK comedy fans, there's an episode of Only Fools and Horses that was made to promote careers in the oil industry. No laughter track and I guess they didn't want to pay for the theme tune but it's still a fun watch
http://tellyspotting.kera.org/2013/11/08/the-lost-only-fools-and-horses-episode-licensed-to-drill/
In an episode of 'Only fools and horses', a British TV show, the family is about to move to Australia for a better life. But, at the last minute, their plans are derailed because Rodney's visa is denied, due to an old drug conviction (IIRC smoking, not selling).
This man is planning to go to Australia to visit his wife, but the article says he has a past conviction for selling drugs. I wonder whether this will affect his ability to visit.
I don't know how accurate the description of the murder conviction is, but the list of shortcomings sounds like it's out of the plot of a TV show. It's amazing that this happens in real life.
At what point is the Delaware Block House[1] still the original building[2]? You can see the roof was replaced recently, and presumably the rendering[3]..
[1]: Delaware, the Block House https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Block_House
[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_of_Theseus
[3]: In the episode "Heroes and Villains" (Only Fools and Horses UK Sitcom), Trigger wins an award for having owned the same broom for 20 years. He reveals that it has had 17 new heads and 14 new handles, but insists it is still the same broom.
A lot of classic British TV shows from the 70s and 80s hold up really well today. After all, Fawlty Towers was a 1975 and 1979 series, with other greats from the era including Dad's Army (1968-1977) and Steptoe and Son (1968-1972). Blackadder and Only Fools and Horses were good in the next decade as well, and that's only counting some of the comedy ones.
As for whether TV now is better or worse... well, probably the same to be honest. Sturgeon's Law reigns supreme where any fiction is concerned, so every generation will have about 90% utterly forgettable crap and 10% amazing classics. The crap just gets filtered out over time as people choose to preserve the stuff that truly matters.
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/NostalgiaFilter
Either way, there's really not any one era where 'no TV shows' or 'all TV shows' hold up well.
Also known as "Trigger's Broom" in the UK.
From Wikipedia: In the episode "Heroes and Villains", Trigger wins an award for having owned the same broom for 20 years. He reveals that it has had 17 new heads and 14 new handles, but insists it is still the same broom.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trigger_(Only_Fools_and_Horses)
Hahahahaha - "some people" - I'll have you know I've more experience with psychoactive drugs than you'll ever be able to understand. I've even been "in the K-hole" - TFA presented Ketamine as an erstwhile party drug, which it is, and in that context the saying goes "Only Fools and Horses" which refers to the fact that it is a horse tranquilizer and the level of wisdom involved in its use in a recreational setting. "Only Fools and Horses" is also a popular British sitcom (and turn of phrase) hence the Atlantic reference you humourless self-agrandising twit.
I was trying to address directly that point. Pre-bitcoin, you could avoid the enforcement mechanisms with hard cash and a barrow. There was a long running British sitcom called "Only Fools and Horses" that dealt with this quite thoroughly.
edit - If fleshed out a bit, the premise behind this project might actually make quite a good 21st century sequel episode. Del Boy would love bitcoin.
Both your and the op story reminded me of the British TV show Only Fools and Horses.
(I thought you were plc on Twitter and hence British? I'll explain anyway for the benefit of the non-Brits!)
Del Boy - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Del_Boy - is the lead character in, perhaps, Britain's best ever sitcom that ran in the early 1980s, Only Fools and Horses. Del Boy was a slightly shady trader-cum-entrepreneur who always had an eye out for some dodgy merchandise to shift.
Calling some a "Del Boy" communicates the attitude of seeing entrepreneurs as fly by nights, always looking out for an easy buck.