User Reviews

'Only Fools' fans will forever be divided about whether the show should have returned for the final 01-03 trilogy, but what most people seem to agree on is that this episode was the best of the three.

The reason for this mainly is the fact that the Trotters losing their millions isn't really mentioned, and it feels much more like a 'classic' episode that could've come from any time in the shows life.

Yes, the 'Gary' joke is silly, but it's played well, and just the idea of Boycie staying with the Trotters is funny in itself.

I can't say I'm the biggest fan of the 01-03 trilogy episodes, but I did enjoy this one.

After 2001's abysmal return for the Trotters, it was with heavy hearts but a dutiful sense of curiosity that we sat down the following Christmas to watch Strangers on the Shore. Perhaps lowered expectations played a part but Strangers on the Shore is a noticeable improvement over If They Could See Us Now. Some of the same problems are still evident, from crasser material to broader performances, but basically this feels like a bad episode of Only Fools and Horses rather than some fan-made attempt by someone who has managed to clone and then enslave the cast. There are even one or two laughs here, until things begin to careen out of control in the final act. There's a bit more structure to Strangers on the Shore than its aimless, exposition-heavy predecessor. A first half based around Del and Rodney attending a naval reunion in France nicely leads into a second half based around an apparent illegal immigrant they accidentally bring back with them. Interludes with Boycie also finally wind their way into the main plot towards the end, giving Strangers on the Shore a feeling of something closer to John Sullivan's more intricate writing in Only Fools and Horses' heyday.

Unfortunately, the writing in Strangers on the Shore is not as sharp as it needs to be. The naval reunion sequence descends into a ludicrous joke about Del and Rodney assuming Albert has fathered a whole town of bearded men, while any hopes that Sullivan might explore the theme of immigration with an astute satirical bent are scuppered when Nabil Elouahabi's character becomes a retrograde "funny foreigner" whose relentless intonations of "Gary" seem custom made for British viewers to practice their generic racist accent routine by quoting later. If Strangers on the Shore comes off more like a hamfisted farce than anything deeply offensive, its content still feels "very 2000s" twenty years down the line.