To Hull and Back
- Episode aired Dec 25, 1985
- 1h 35m
Boycie and Abdul pitch a diamond scam to Del Boy, who immediately turns them down. That is until they offer him a £15,000 cut of the estimated £150,000 sale of the stone on the UK market. De... Read allBoycie and Abdul pitch a diamond scam to Del Boy, who immediately turns them down. That is until they offer him a £15,000 cut of the estimated £150,000 sale of the stone on the UK market. Del finds himself designated as the courier between Holland and Britain. No sooner has Del e... Read allBoycie and Abdul pitch a diamond scam to Del Boy, who immediately turns them down. That is until they offer him a £15,000 cut of the estimated £150,000 sale of the stone on the UK market. Del finds himself designated as the courier between Holland and Britain. No sooner has Del enlisted a reluctant Rodders, he hears his old foil Chief Inspector Slater is eyeing Boycie... Read all
- Mike Fisher
- (as Kenneth Macdonald)
- Teddy
- (as Johnnie Wade)
- Director
- Writer
- John Sullivan(uncredited)
- All cast & crew
- Production, box office & more at IMDbPro
Storyline
Did you know
- TriviaThe only episode of the series to be shot entirely on film as opposed to the usual practice of shooting the interiors (the flat, the pub, etc) at BBC television centre studios on videotape. And also why there was no studio audience to provide the laugh track.
- GoofsWhen Hoskins is paying for his breakfast in Sid's café, the length of Sid's cigarette changes inconsistently between shots.
- ConnectionsFeatured in WatchMojoUK: Top 10 Only Fools and Horses Episodes (2017)
Eschewing the Christmas setting and heightened emotionalism of the previous two year's specials, To Hull and Back opts instead for an all-out crime caper in which Del, Rodney and Uncle Albert get involved in a diamond smuggling plot on behalf of the shady Boycie and his associate Abdul. The elaborately constructed plots that John Sullivan had started to favour in series 3 inform To Hull and Back, with a very clever central scam being supplemented with a terrific series of closing scenes in which twist follows twist. Sullivan manages to have his Christmas cake and eat it too, with a brilliant final sequence in which the Trotters win and lose at the same time, fulfilling viewers equal desire to see their favourite family come out on top while also enjoying their comedic blunders.
To Hull and Back is the middle episode of a trilogy featuring Jim Broadbent as the imposing, crooked police officer Roy Slater, an old school mate of Del's who's mistreatment during those years has resulted in a far-reaching vendetta against his former classmates and seemingly the whole of Peckham. Despite only appearing in three episodes, Slater became an iconic figure in Only Fools mythology, partly thanks to the exceptional performance of Broadbent. Generally associated with more affable roles (and originally considered for the part of Del), Broadbent makes Slater a genuinely frightening figure but underscores the performance with the vulnerability of a wounded schoolboy. Of course, this dimension is in the writing too, with the Slater episodes being some of the finest work Sullivan ever did.
Having only been rewatching the Christmas specials this festive season, I've missed seeing the gallery of characters associated with Only Fools and Horses since the first three specials focus exclusively on the Trotters. But by this stage the ensemble is in place and fans expected to see all their favourites in the festive episode. So we get short cameos from Trigger and Mike, as well as larger roles for Boycie, who is integral to the plot, and Denzil, who gets a funny subplot in which he thinks he is being haunted by visions of Del. This is also Buster Merryfield's first Christmas special after he was hastily written into the series to replace the late Lennard Pearce's Grandad. This sort of major cast change can be a blow from which a sitcom never recovers but Uncle Albert already feels like a longterm fixture here, maintaining that generational divide within the Trotter family without simply replicating what Pearce brought to the series. Albert's maritime experience actually plays a key role here, setting up a series of scenes in which the Trotters get lost at sea. It's a crucial part of the plot which couldn't have been convincingly pulled off with the character of Grandad, which just shows how Sullivan was able to capitalise on the sudden changes he had to make to the series, rather than let them damage the quality.
In terms of dated elements, there's very little of the sexism that tainted the earlier Christmas specials but the questionable racial content is higher. In most cases, it is merely an accurate reflection of the characters and the language they would use, such as when the loathsome Slater refers to a "little p*ki gang" or Del's surge of patriotism finds him eulogising the days when the British would "stitch up the d*gos." Although a line about Denzil's tiredness making him dark around the eyes is problematic given that it was written by a white man, the fact that it comes from Denzil himself contextualises it as a gentle self-ribbing. The only severely sour note is a scene in which Del tricks a black man into buying from him by pretending to be a racist, and this is followed quite soon by a conversation about a man Slater erroneously arrested in which his race is repeatedly but completely superfluously alluded to. It's more baffling than offensive but coming so soon after the dodgier scene it pointlessly exacerbates the discomfort.
But a few inevitable signs of its era are not enough to lower my rating of To Hull and Back from the full 5 stars. This has long been one of my favourite Only Fools and Horses episodes, perhaps topped only by the subsequent Chain Gang, which builds upon the plot intricacies of this episode to create an even cleverer crime caper which stands as one of my favourite TV scripts ever. To Hull and Back isn't far behind, although it feels odd to class this as a TV script because its scope, length and production values all make it feel like a cinema release. A comparatively low budget one, but a big screen experience nonetheless. With a plot that sends the main characters abroad, To Hull and Back could've fallen into naff Holiday on the Buses territory but rather than feel like one of those 70s sitcom spinoff films that attempted to milk one last hurrah from the scraps of residual popularity at the end of their parent series' natural life, To Hull and Back moves its parent series forward, proving the potential for Only Fools and Horses to explore bigger and better canvases, the like of which could never have been foreseen during that modest first series.
- phantom_tollbooth
- Jul 19, 2023
- Permalink
Details
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- See more company credits at IMDbPro
- Runtime1 hour 35 minutes
- Color
- Aspect ratio
- 1.33 : 1