Two people who wind one another up - it's a staple of situation comedy, from "Red Dwarf" to "Blackadder" to "Only Fools & Horses". It's the sibling rivalry perfectly conveyed by the actors and scripts that makes "Fools" so warm and special, though.
David Jason has inhabited the role written on the page so completely that he is now the true original, and any Cockney wide boys armed with braces and Filofax are just copycats aping their hero. Rodney, played by Nicholas Lyndhurst, is the gawky younger brother used as a stooge by his crafty go-getter relative. The family unit was rounded off by two older house-guests, and longtime series fans can be divided into two camps over whether they prefer Lennard Pierce's Grandad or Merryfield's Uncle Albert. I'm a Buster man myself - probably due to my age and the fact that the brothers were less inhibited about making fun of him more.
These were characters most people from a working class family could relate to, and we shared their own feelings about their numerous setbacks and occasional triumphs. It was truly a joyous moment when they finally got what they had spent years hustling for, and perhaps that's how these larger-than-life tradesmen should best be remembered. Familiarity made it good to see them back in the one-off specials, but deep down they will always be a pair of opportunists who somehow managed to steal our hearts when we weren't quite paying attention, and there's only so many ups and downs a streetwise life can take! Only Fools and Horses will go down in the history books as perhaps the most unpretentious and genuinely affectionate serial of its type that's ever been made.
David Jason has inhabited the role written on the page so completely that he is now the true original, and any Cockney wide boys armed with braces and Filofax are just copycats aping their hero. Rodney, played by Nicholas Lyndhurst, is the gawky younger brother used as a stooge by his crafty go-getter relative. The family unit was rounded off by two older house-guests, and longtime series fans can be divided into two camps over whether they prefer Lennard Pierce's Grandad or Merryfield's Uncle Albert. I'm a Buster man myself - probably due to my age and the fact that the brothers were less inhibited about making fun of him more.
These were characters most people from a working class family could relate to, and we shared their own feelings about their numerous setbacks and occasional triumphs. It was truly a joyous moment when they finally got what they had spent years hustling for, and perhaps that's how these larger-than-life tradesmen should best be remembered. Familiarity made it good to see them back in the one-off specials, but deep down they will always be a pair of opportunists who somehow managed to steal our hearts when we weren't quite paying attention, and there's only so many ups and downs a streetwise life can take! Only Fools and Horses will go down in the history books as perhaps the most unpretentious and genuinely affectionate serial of its type that's ever been made.