r/OnlyFoolsAndHorses

Does anyone know anything about the different versions of a royal flush. Apparently there is multiple versions of the episode.

Probably been posted before, but this makes me smile so much

as an american my prospects of it ever coming here are basically nil

but my read on the soundtrack is that its basically the main series condensed into a musical format, so i was wondering, whats yalls thought on it?

This episode is one of the worst and most confusing of the entire franchise. I simply don't fully understand what is happening in this episode.

Of course it isn't all bad, all the 'There's a rhino loose in the City' dialogue is absolutely brilliant. But this just seems like a distraction to the overall episode, to which I will air my confusion with a series of questions with context.

Micky Pierce arrives in the Trotter's flat with a lady and starts filming a scene. Rodney comes out of the kitchen halfway through making the coffee and questions this. He then returns to the kitchen and hears "Night Nurse - Take One". Then leaves the kitchen again in disgust to find said lady dangling a bra in the air. Surely then he knows what's happening?

The scene then ends. Reading between the scenes, surely Rodney airs his disgreement with Mickey about his motives in coming to the flat?

Later in the episode, everyone gathers in the backroom of The Nag's Head to see the finished product. What were they expecting to see? (They all know the production is called Night Nurse, and they all seemingly expect to see clothing come off because they are cheering).

It is only when Rodney appears from the kitchen in the film that Del gets angry, and Rodney makes a swift exit. Did he unexpectedly think Rodney was involved in the film and didn't tell him? Was Del annoyed that it was filmed in their flat? And if so, why didn't he recognise his flat when the camera pans across the living room.

Surely Mickey knows he wasn't welcome to film in the Trotters' flat by now So why did he return at the end of the episode with his cast looking to film again?

The Green Green Grass is a pretty dramatic change of direction from the final Only Fools and Horses specials. I never felt those specials were particularly necessary, despite most of them being good quality, but at least they felt like mini-movies rather than traditional studio sitcoms. The Green Green Grass goes completely the other way. It's a studio sitcom built around broad, slapstick characters, with a fair amount of location shooting, but very little that actually gives the show an identity of its own.

The biggest problem is what happens to Boycie and Marlene. At the start, they still feel recognisable as the characters from Only Fools and Horses. But by around the middle of series two, they seem to have been replaced by completely different characters who just happen to have the same names and are played by the same actors.

Boycie in particular becomes ridiculous. He's supposed to be the snobbish, arrogant used-car salesman we've known for years, yet we're suddenly watching him audition for Pop Idol and wearing leather trousers. It's the sort of thing that makes you wonder what happened to the character between episodes.

The writing doesn't help. Original creator John Sullivan has fewer and fewer writing credits as the series progresses, and unfortunately you can feel it. The show becomes increasingly reliant on broad comedy and increasingly detached from what made Boycie work in the first place.

There are also plenty of forced references to Only Fools and Horses, with familiar characters occasionally popping up and constant reminders of Del and Rodney. Rather than making me nostalgic, most of these references just make me want to watch the original again. If your spin-off keeps reminding me how much better the parent show is, that's probably not a great sign.

Marlene gets an even worse deal. She has very little to do across all four series and is largely reduced to the standard sitcom wife character whose main purpose is to react to whatever ridiculous thing her husband has done that week. It's a shame because the relationship between Boycie and Marlene was one of the best parts of their appearances in Only Fools and Horses, yet the spin-off doesn't really know what to do with her.

There are laughs here, and I'm not going to pretend the entire thing is terrible. The cast are good, and occasionally the show gets the tone right. But it gradually becomes less and less like a genuine continuation of Boycie and Marlene and more like a generic studio sitcom wearing an Only Fools and Horses name badge.

And that's ultimately the problem. The Green Green Grass isn't awful because it's a bad sitcom; it's disappointing because it takes two genuinely great supporting characters and slowly turns them into exaggerated versions of themselves.

By the end, it's honestly not that far removed from Mrs Brown's Boys — and that's about as brutal a comparison as I can give a sitcom.