Dipsticks In Amsterdam

 

One of the most curious phenomena in the history of British comedy was movies based on sitcoms. This can perhaps be traced back to The Army Game’s film spin-off, I Only Arsked! (1958), but it was the 1970s that saw its golden age (if you can call it that). Most of these movie versions paled in comparison to their TV counterparts, with many of them featuring recycled scripts or disorientating cast changes. Sometimes, they would offer something different to the TV show, such as Johnny Speight’s 1968 version of Till Death Us Do Part partly focusing on Alf Garnett’s war years. However, this difference usually meant the cast being supplanted outside their “sit” (often at the expense of the “com”) and sent on holiday, such as Holiday on the Buses, George and Mildred and, most notoriously, Are You Being Served?, where all the staff of Grace Brothers went abroad together!

Although the sitcom movie spin-off was a dead duck by the 1980s, you could still see them repeated regularly on TV, and their influence could be seen in several feature-length sitcom Christmas specials shot entirely on film. The first was Last of the Summer Wine’s 1983 black farce Getting Sam Home, which was based on Roy Clarke’s 1974 novel and ran for 90 minutes. This was followed in 1984 by a 90-minute Christmas special of John Sullivan’s Just Good Friends. However, it was Sullivan's 1985 Only Fools and Horses Christmas special, To Hull and Back, that left an impression on me, partly because I was now old enough to remember it and partly because my dad had started freelancing in Amsterdam at the time (where part of the special is set).

By 1985, Only Fools had become a huge hit after a slow start. The fourth series that year had seen the late Lennard Pearce’s Grandad replaced by Buster Merryfield’s old sea dog, Uncle Albert. (When my parents told me that the man playing Grandad had sadly died, my confused five-year-old brain thought that he had perished at the hands of a falling chandelier.) Grandad was a great comedy character, so Merryfield had big shoes to fill. By the end of the year, he had shown that he was capable of continuing the strong triumvirate dynamic with David Jason and Nicholas Lyndhurst.

The show’s rising success saw it gain a prime-time spot in BBC One’s Christmas Day schedule, the second time it would appear on 25 December following 1983’s special (the last episode to feature Pearce). The £850,000 budget spent on To Hull and Back paid off, as it was the most watched TV programme on the day, with 16.9 million viewers. What’s more, in the battle of the cigar-chomping dodgy dealers, it beat the two-hour Minder Christmas special set aboard the Orient Express in the ratings, which was shown on ITV at the same time.

Watching To Hull and Back as a six-year-old was a slightly unsettling experience. This was partly down to it being entirely filmed on 16mm with no laughter track. This, combined with the high-stakes plot (diamond smuggling), made it resemble the “gritty” crime series my parents watched, such as Bergerac or The Professionals. Then, there was the use of naughty words such as “crap” and “bastard”. Plus, the sets looked disconcertingly different – you could see parts of the pub and the flat that you wouldn’t normally see in a half-hour TV episode, shot on film rather than video.

But what I did appreciate at even that young age was that it was a caper (even if I didn’t yet have that word in my vocabulary), following in the footsteps of celluloid classics such as The Ladykillers, The Wrong Arm of the Law and The Italian Job. I love Del Boy stopping by an oil rig to ask directions to Holland. I love Rodney haggling at the toll booth. I love the Trotters fleeing from the Dutch police (which featured in a brilliant mash-up on YouTube that saw them being pursued by the Fifth Doctor and his companions). I love Denzil being haunted by Del. I love Albert’s failure at celestial navigation (“There’s millions of ‘em, ain’t there?”). I love Del’s jingoistic rendition of the Robin Hood theme at the bow of the boat. And I love (spoiler alert) “CHIEF” Detective Inspector Slater’s downfall at the end.

Jim Broadbent is brilliant as the corrupt copper Roy Slater, a villainous character that stands alongside Harry Grout in Porridge and Len Brennan in Father Ted in making a huge impact in a series despite only appearing three times. (For all his illustrious movie roles, Broadbent said on The Graham Norton Show in 2022 that people approach him to talk about Slater more than any other character he’s played.) And of the regular supporting characters, most are crucial to the plot, rather than just sitting in the Nag's Head making funnies (something that befell later Only Fools Christmas specials). Only Trigger is really superfluous to the main caper, but Roger Lloyd Pack as Trigger is always welcome.

Only Fools' Christmas specials would become a perennial part of British Christmas TV, reaching a ratings high point with the 1996 trilogy. However, I don’t think Sullivan ever beat the quality of his 1985 Christmas caper. Many Only Fools fans tend to point to 1989’s The Jolly Boys' Outing as the series' best Christmas special. Although I love that, it came at the point the show was moving into comic-soap territory with the Raquel/Cassandra love interests, which reached a nadir with the somewhat downbeat 1990 and 1993 specials.

Forty years on, To Hull and Back still stands up. Okay, there’s the odd unfortunate racial epithet, and Del pretending to be racist to sell a watch is a bit wincing, but there’s very little else here you could call “problematic”. It remains one of my earliest and fondest Christmas memories, summing up Christmas '85 to me as much as Shakin' Stevens and my new LEGO train set.