Читать книгу Only Fools and Horses - Graham McCann - Страница 7

PROLOGUE

Ever tried.

Ever failed.

No matter.

Try again.

Fail again.

Fail better.

DEL BOY: All the things that we’ve ever got out of life have come from my intelligence and my foresight.

RODNEY: Well, I’m glad somebody’s owned up!

The yellow van. The little man with the flat cap and gift of the gab. The taller, younger man with the permanently puzzled expression. The deals, the dreams, the scams and the calamities. The grand chandelier crashing to the floor. The gap where the bar flap should have been. The repeated affirmation that ‘This time next year, we’ll be millionaires!’ These are just a few of the things that come to mind when we think of the great British sitcom Only Fools and Horses. Surely only a twonk, a plonker, a wally or a dipstick would fail to rub their hands together, when thinking of this show, and exclaim ‘cushty’, ‘lovely jubbly’ or perhaps even ‘joie de vivre!’

Only Fools and Horses is one of those sitcoms whose appeal transcends mere cult comedy fandom and engages with all of those who appreciate good acting, good writing and good television. Many sitcoms simply arrive, amuse and then fade away, providing us with nothing more than a pleasant but evanescent distraction. The special few, however, creep deep into our consciousness, capture our imagination, engage our emotions and never, ever, let us forget them. Only Fools and Horses, like Hancock’s Half-Hour, Steptoe and Son, Dad’s Army, Fawlty Towers and a few others, has earned its place in such a pantheon.

Only Fools and Horses was the real deal. All of us knew of characters like Del Boy and Rodney Trotter, and most of us also knew of one or two people like Grandad and Uncle Albert, and Trigger, Boycie and Marlene. The life that they lived in and around that high-rise council flat at Nelson Mandela House in Peckham seemed authentic as well as funny. We watched the show not to escape from reality but rather to be entertained by it. As with all of the finest British sitcoms, it was a case of the British laughing at certain defining characteristics of the British.

Only Fools made us laugh at our amateurishness (the Trotters are ‘self-unemployed’ salesmen who try to flog a strange range of faulty goods), our parochialism (most things strike them as exotic whenever they venture a mile or two outside of Peckham), our dogged nostalgia (Del’s for his mother, Grandad’s for his youth, Uncle Albert’s for the war and Rodney’s for the promise engendered by his precious two GCEs) and our adamantine and ineluctable preoccupation with capital and class (one way or another, with unshakeable belief in the principle of ‘he who dares, wins’, Del is determined to drag his family up the social ladder). It also tapped into that inexhaustible well of contrariness – mixing idealism with cynicism, producing bubbles of pretension that are then rudely pierced and popped just as soon as they appear on the surface – that has driven so many British partnerships from Falstaff and Prince Hal to Lennon and McCartney and beyond (‘I’ve got to admit it’s getting better’/ . . . ‘It couldn’t get no worse’¹). With one man gazing up hopefully at the stars and the other one glancing down anxiously at the gutter, Britain’s traditional comic–drama dynamic was re-enacted all over again. ‘We’re fifteen minutes from the West End and fifteen minutes from London,’ declares Rodney brightly from within the confines of their tower block council flat. ‘Yes,’ comes the sardonic reply, ‘and fifteen minutes from the ground.’

The success of the show was, and continues to be, extra-ordinary. It attracted huge audiences during its 22-year run, making it the most-watched British show of two consecutive decades, eventually reaching a peak at 24.3 million – still a record for an episode of a UK sitcom.² It also won numerous awards, including three ‘Best Comedy Series’ BAFTAs. It was voted ‘Britain’s Best Sitcom’ in a major BBC poll³ and came forty-fifth in the British Film Institute’s list of the 100 Greatest Television Programmes.⁴ It has been sold to many countries throughout the world (including Australia, Belgium, Bosnia, Croatia, Cyprus, Greece, Republic of Ireland, Israel, Malta, Montenegro, New Zealand, Pakistan, Serbia, Slovenia, South Africa and Spain) and it continues to inspire spin-off shows and frequent weeks and weekends of repeats on various satellite channels.

What is, if anything, even more extraordinary is the enduring affection that the programme still commands. A remarkable number of people remain eager to watch the old episodes, discuss them, savour them and cherish them. A whole new generation is now discovering them and delighting in them. An older generation is finding new reasons to re-visit and re-view them. Even in a culture that is now, at its broadest and most prosaic, so robotically and neurotically restless and forgetful, there is still a strong fondness for a sitcom that ended, as a series, in 1991, and then reappeared for the last time as an occasional special in 2003. It came as no real surprise, therefore, when a 2008 OnePoll survey found that Only Fools and Horses was the television series that Britons would most like to see return to their screens.⁵

The sadly premature death of the show’s gifted creator, John Sullivan, on 23 April 2011, dashed such hopes definitively, but also underlined how keenly so many people still care about the greatest of his numerous achievements as a writer. Included among the countless warmly respectful obituaries and encomia about the man himself were many words of praise for Only Fools and Horses in particular. The critic, writer and broadcaster David Quantick, for example, remarked that ‘anyone seeking to write comedy who is even only slightly aware of sitcom’s lineage’ would be well advised to study the show and ‘see how it is done by a master of popular, populist, intelligent and witty comedy’; the BBC’s Creative Director, Alan Yentob, praised the ‘beauty’ of the programme’s scripts and predicted that ‘the Trotter family would provide enjoyment, tears and laughter for generations to come’; and another of Sullivan’s fellow writers, Maurice Gran, said of Only Fools that ‘the richness of characterisation, and indeed the number of vivid characters, leaves most other sitcoms looking sparse and underpopulated’.⁶

A substantial celebration of this remarkable show, therefore, is something that it richly deserves, but, nonetheless, it needs to be done in the right spirit. Great sitcoms, in this day and age, remain available at the flick of a switch. There is thus no need to retrieve them via an elaborate and painstaking excavation. What is worth attempting, however, is to reach out to those – probably the vast majority – who simply watched the episodes when they first went out and then, when the show finally ended, moved on before the ubiquitous repeats could wear out what had always been most welcome. These are the people who still have an appetite to awaken.

What an appropriate celebration should seek to do, therefore, is to revive the old inclusive enthusiasm for the show. A great comedy programme is something to treasure because it brings so many of us together in pleasure.

Only Fools and Horses is a particularly important comedy show to celebrate, because it not only engaged with us as a nation but also with the sitcom as a genre. While reflecting, and sometimes responding to, our various fashions, follies and foibles, the show also explored and challenged what a sitcom is supposed to be and should strive to achieve. It was, in its own sly little way, a revolutionary show, as well as a very funny one.

The story of this sitcom’s evolution is thus actually a story of real risks and worries and great triumphs and achievements. It is a story of a brilliant team of hugely talented individuals working together incredibly hard to realise a very special dream. It is a story of ordinary viewers finding something on the screen that genuinely impressed, amused and moved them. The endless loop of repeats, well-intended though it is, can sometimes distort or obscure most or even all of this rich and remarkable story. That is why it is worth going back to the beginning, and seeing it unfold all over again through a fresh pair of eyes.

This book, therefore, will aim to remind the broader audience of how it came to fall in love with Only Fools and Horses. The experience of discovering, following and being fascinated with the show will be reanimated by telling the full story of this sitcom’s eventful life, and how it became such a positive and pleasant part of the lives of those who watched it.