10 Banned Episodes Of Beloved TV Sitcoms
4. A Royal Flush - Only Fools And Horses
If you’re a reader outside the UK, you’ll almost certainly need a primer for what Only Fools and Horses is. A beloved sitcom that aired during the 1980s, it starred British acting institutions David Jason and Nicholas Lindhurst as two London-based brothers wheeling and dealing, and doing what they could to make money.
Though they were often scam artists and traded in illegal goods, the show framed them as two men just doing what they could to get by, while looking out for each other - which is what actually perturbed many about the episode A Royal Flush.
This 1986 Christmas Day special saw Rodney get close with an upper-class family, and his brother Del Boy acts progressively more uncharacteristically aggressive. He verbally abuses Rodney and even threatens an audience member of a theatre show.
Fans often called the episode one of the worst in the show’s run, and creator John Sullivan tended to agree. When it came to 2005, when the show was being remastered for DVD, Sullivan personally saw to it that a whole 18 minutes of the 76 were cut, and a laugh-track, recorded by an audience of fans, was added to “soften” Del Boy’s harsh behaviour.
This “writer’s cut” version replaced the original in syndication and all future releases for 15 years - all the way until 2021, when the original was also supplied alongside it on the latest Blu-Ray releases.