Friendly union: David Jason and Tessa Peake-Jones Photo: Radio Times
Tessa Peake-Jones – Raquel from Only Fools and horses” – tells fans that working with Del Boy and Rodney wasn't all about falling through bars and knocking over chandeliers. “People say, 'Didn't you laugh a lot?' Yes, we laughed. But when you work with these two, it's really serious stuff.”
By “serious stuff” Peake-Jones means the work David Jason and Nicholas Lyndhurst put in to hone their performances as the Trotter brothers. When Peake-Jones joined the series in the 1988 Christmas special, Dates, she had no experience performing comedy in front of a television studio audience. Jason and Lyndhurst were “masters” at this, says Peake-Jones. “They honed their craft every single day in rehearsals. Every minute of their rehearsals was aimed at making it better. As an actor, you have to take these things seriously because those laughs don't come easily – they come from careful attention to detail.”
It's fitting that Dates, first shown on Christmas Day 35 years ago, was seriously serious material. Perhaps this is the closest film to dramaturgy “Only Fools and Horses”. At the same time, the series features some of its most memorable comedy scenes, namely the high-speed three-wheeled van chase and the revelation that Del Boy's new bird actress, Raquel, is a stripper.
Series creator John Sullivan called “Dates” his favorite episode. It wasn't the highest-rated special in terms of viewership (16.6 million versus the 1996 peak of 21.3 million for “Heroes and Villains”), but Dates ended up there with the best numbers ever. It won a Bafta for Best Comedy and took the series into new, more heartfelt territory. “That’s what I like,” Sullivan wrote in a 2002 book about the series. “As a writer, it was one of those stories that just fell into place.”
By 1988, Only Fools and Horses had already earned its status as the nation's favorite sitcom. It was the main theme of Christmas TV for five years. Del, Rodney and Uncle Albert were already so synonymous with festive television that they also starred in an advert for the 1988 Radio Times Christmas paper (although the BBC was criticized by critics for putting Carla Lane's Scouse comedy Bread in prime time at Christmas , and not Only fools and horses).
At that time, there were some changes going on behind the scenes at Only Fools and Horses. Producer and director Ray Butt, who oversaw Only Fools and Horses since its debut in 1981, has left the show. Gareth Gwenlan, the BBC's head of comedy, took over as producer and Tony Dow became director. And, starting with Dates, location shooting moved to Bristol, which was also the Trotters' hometown of Peckham. The dates also preceded the sitcom's sixth season – the first full series in three years – which began two weeks later and extended episodes to 50 minutes, a result of Sullivan and Jason lobbying the BBC to extend its runtime.
For Sullivan, there was a change on screen as well, which he described as “a little desperation creeping into Del… because he himself isn't attracted to girls anymore.” Indeed, Dates was – unusually for a studio sitcom – an attempt to move the characters forward.
“I decided to do Dates because I felt Del should start dating more mature women,” Sullivan told series biographer Steve. Clark. “I couldn't have him hanging around discos all the time chasing 20-year-olds, so I invited Raquel… To me, 'Dates' was Del's attempt at a more mature relationship, because I knew that was going to happen.”
In the special, Del Boy visits a computer dating agency. Although his visit to the dating agency is not as memorable as Del Boy's famous blunders, it is the best momentamid scenes with Del Boy and a picture of self-conscious chauvinism. When asked what kind of woman he is looking for, Del Boy simply replies: “a bird” and “something like that.” Del calls himself “Derek Duvall”, claiming to be a man of art and the owner of an import-export business – a pretense broken by his market-trader jab and his promise of a guaranteed steak for a lucky lady. Guaranteed.
Meanwhile, Rodney asks Nags Head bartender Neris (Andre Bernard) out on a date, but Mickey Pierce convinces Rodney that Neris, known around the parish as “Nervous” Neris, likes rough macho men, which causes Rodders to dress in a leather jacket. and jeans. “You look like a bully,” Del Boy says. “It's called the James Dean look,” Rodney explains. “Yeah, but when they said James Dean look,” Del replies, “they meant pre-crash!”
“I had no idea that this would single-handedly change my career”: David Jason and Tessa Peake-Jones Photo: Radio Times
One of the great things about the Trotters dynamic is that while Rodders emphasizes Del's bravado and chutzpah, he too often follows his older brother's lead. While playing a violent role to impress Nerys and traveling in a three-wheeled van, Rodney encounters a car full of bandits. “They don’t scare me,” he tells Nerys. “This is my jungle and I'm at the top of the tree.” Within minutes, the bandits turn the car around and chase Rodney through the squalid streets of Peckham, leaving the nervous Nerys an incoherent, mascara-splattered wreck.
The van, which Rodney once declared would not go 70mph if pushed off a cliff, had to make a high-speed jump. “Everyone was so excited about it,” John Sullivan told Steve Clark. “The stuntmen said that when the van lands, the engine could fail and whoever is driving could end up in a lap full of the engine. So Nick wasn't allowed to drive it, but it worked fine and the old van held up brilliantly and it was a great shot.”
Incredibly – given the sitcom's huge success at the time – Tessa Peake-Jones had never seen Only Fools and Horses before she was cast as Raquel. “I was a stage actress, so I went out every evening,” she says. “I had no idea. When I got the script, I read it like a play. It was so amazingly written… It felt special, but I had no idea of the impact or that it would single-handedly change my life and career. Even when I went to the reading and the actors said, “Hey, you won't be able to ride the subway after this,” and I thought, “What are they talking about?”
Although Raquel was intended to be a one-off character, Tessa Peake-Jones played the character for 15 years. “I often wonder if I became a big fan, how would I deal with it?” she says. “I literally took it as my next acting job. It was about, “How will I get along with the other actors?” How can I get into this character? If I thought, “Oh my God, this is the most amazing opportunity,” it might have influenced the way I did it. I was so astute in my desire to bring to life what John Sullivan created. That was more important than anything else.”
Peake-Jones was living in East London at the time and knew who Raquel was – what markets she was in I shopped, what clothes I wore. She also understood the character's difficulties as an aspiring actress. “I knew how she felt about going to auditions and not getting it, being unemployed and doing a job you don't want to do,” Peake-Jones says.
In this episode, Del Boy and Raquel meet through a dating agency and meet under the clock at Waterloo station, reminiscent of the railway romance of Trevor Howard and Celia Johnson in Brief Encounter (“My favorite moment is when the big spaceship crashes and all the little ones the Martians are coming out,” says Del Boy). Del Boy accompanies Raquel to the Hilton Hotel for lunch, believing that she is an actress accustomed to the high life. Raquel admits that the highlight of her career so far has been playing the Lizard in Doctor Who, but Del Boy continues to pretend to be Derek Duval and pays the head waiter (Doctor Who's Brigadier Nicholas Courtenay, oddly enough) to interrupt them lunch with calls from Del. “New York office.”
Unlike Derek Duvall, John Sullivan's writing is impressively rich. Del Boy can't help but reveal who he really is behind the colorful jargon and embellishments that have always been part of the character's magic. When Raquel tells him that her ex-husband believed there should only be one breadwinner in the house, Del says his own father was the same. “Every morning he got up at six to make sure my mom was at work,” he tells her.
Tessa Peake-Jones remembers a little detail suggested by David Jason: when Del and Raquel start eating at the Hilton, neither of them knows which knife and fork to use. “That’s how brilliant David Jason is,” she says. “It wasn't in the script. It would never have occurred to me, but of course it was absolutely correct. Just one small action that says these two people come from the same place – the same upbringing, the same class – and they're pretending to be something they're not. Without any words.”
Genius: Only Fools Creator John Sullivan Photo: Independent/Alamy Stock Photo
Far from being broad comedy, Derek Trotter's genius has always been in the details. “David Jason knows the man,” Peake-Jones says. “He developed it with John Sullivan and the directors, but there's nothing he didn't know about Del Boy. He's a very thoughtful actor. These tiny details make him one of the best comedic actors we have.”
David Jason was equally adept at handling Del Boy's emotional blows. Later in the episode, Del orders a surprise stripagram for Uncle Albert's birthday party and is humiliated when the stripagram turns out to be Raquel, naked in front of her Nags Head mates.
As a comedy plot, this is one of the best – there is a chandelier, an exploding coach during a trip to Margate or dressing up as Batman and Robin. “I felt terrible doing it because you’re so vulnerable,” Peake-Jones says of striptease. “But Buster Merrifield [Uncle Albert] was so great and inspiring. He knew I was afraid of it.”
Only Fools and Horses is sometimes called a sitcom that is now behind the times in its language and views (especially its early episodes), but Dates is ahead of its time. Del Boy, who previously clarified that he wanted a date where “everything is in its place,” learned a hard lesson about sexual politics.
“I think until that moment Del Boy had not grasped the fact that a woman could have her own career and want to be independent,” Peake-Jones says. “Raquel thinks her career as an actress is failing, but she's trying to create her own world.”
“I literally took it as my next acting job”: Tessa Peake-Jones and the rest of the Only Fools cast Photo: Mark Bourdillon
Indeed, her first appearance in Raquel has a touch of kitchen drama: down on her luck, unhappy marriage behind her, she's struggling to make something of her life – but is suddenly emboldened by Del Boy's “she who dares wins” mentality. A tender reconciliation ensues when Raquel finds Del Boy in a café and thanks him for restoring her self-confidence. She even adheres to Delboyism: “This time next year I will become famous.”
In “Dates,” Del Boy faces his final heartbreak. On his way to stop Raquel from leaving the country for a tour of the Middle East, he is arrested for ripping a policewoman's blouse, mistaking her for another stripper (“Get them out!” Del shouts, tearing her uniform, not has completely turned over a new leaf when it comes to women). Raquel, thinking Del has abandoned her, leaves.
Tessa Peake-Jones may not have seen Only Fools and Horses at the time, but Raquel falls in love with Del just as viewers have for years years – she is not about bragging, but about a heart of 42 carats.
When Only Fools and Horses returned for a sixth season two weeks after Dates, Sullivan weaved more dramatic elements into stories about Del Boy falling into a bar, exploding sex dolls, and Rodney winning a holiday to Spain for the kids before 14 years old. Rodney will meet Cassandra and fly to the Nelson Mandela House nest. In the final episode, Del Boy is left standing alone, clutching the bride and groom's wedding cake as he watches Rodney experience the happy ending that Del himself sacrificed to raise his little brother.
John Sullivan brought Raquel back in the 1989 Christmas special, “The Jolly Boys' Walk,” which is also considered a fan favorite episode.
“From Dates onwards, everything was the way John Sullivan thought. “We can take this further than just laughing,” Peake-Jones says. “We can actually address what makes everyone human. John was very easy to make jokes. I think he wanted to search within himself and see how deeply he could delve into pathos and that side of life… he was a comedic genius.”
Tessa Peake-Jones will appear in the new series Grantchester on ITV on January 11, 2024
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