Only Fools and Horses Series 1

• Cert:
• Cat.no: BBCDVD 1035
• Running time: 215 minutes
• Year: 1981
• Pressing: 2000
• Region(s): 2, 4 (UK PAL)
• Chapters: 42 plus extras
• Sound: Dolby Digital 2.0 (Mono)
• Languages: English
• Subtitles: English
• Fullscreen: 4:3
• 16:9-enhanced: No
• Macrovision: No
• Disc Format: DVD 5
• Price: £19.99
• Extras: None
  

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  Director:

  Martin Shardlow

Producer:

Screenplay:

Music:

Cast:

Derek ‘Del Boy’ Trotter: David Jason
Rodney Trotter: Nicholas Lyndhurst
Grandad: Lennard Pearce
Trigger: Roger Lloyd Pack
Mike: Kenneth MacDonald
Denzil: Paul Barber
Mickey Pearce: Patrick Murray
Boycie: John Challis
Marlene: Sue Holderness

Stick a pony in me pocket, I’ll fetch the suitcase from the van. A pony? A ton? Some people couldn’t give a ‘monkey’ and they were the ones who missed out on what used to be a great sitcom. At this time Del Boy (David Jason) was just a plain wheeler-dealer, Rodney (Nicholas Lyndhurst) was the original plonker and the oldie in the flat was Granddad (Lennard Pearce). When did it start to go wrong? When the first two got regular squeezes in the form of Raquel (Tessa Peake-Jones) and washboard-chest Cassandra (Gwyneth Strong), Rodders got married and they eventually won the lottery.

All six episodes from the series are here: In Big Brother, Del Boy reckons he can make a packet out of 25 Old English vinyl briefcases; Rodney loses his ‘bird’, Monica of the fat thighs, to Mickey Pearce (Patrick Murray) in Go West Young Man and Del is after a particular statue in Cash and Curry. He also falls in love again with Pauline in The Second Time Around but what happened to her two previous husbands wasn’t so romantic; Trotters Ethnic Tours gets on the move in A Slow Bus to Chingford and the threat of nuclear war looms large in The Russians Are Coming.

Also included is the 1981 festive special, Christmas Crackers, where Grandad’s cooking Xmas dinner and Rodney is off down the Monte Carlo Club.

Almost twenty years have passed since the original broadcast of this series. The picture quality’s a little on the soft side and the mono soundtrack gives clear enough dialogue, but it’s as good as can be expected. The average bitrate is approximately 4.94Mb/s for each episode.

There are six chapters per episode, totalling 42 in all, while the menus are static and silent. The dialogue and subtitles are English only.

There’s nothing in the way of extras, but £19.99 is a fair price for an entire comedy series, so don’t be put off by the overall score.