UKTV Presentation

Watching Miami Twice on Gold right now, they seem to be cutting out quite a lot of dialogue since the last time I saw it. Presumably they've decided they want to cram in a couple of extra advert breaks.

Funnily enough I've just been watching it too (for the millionth time) and thought the ads were coming thick and fast. A shame shows are treated like that. I've always resisted buying the DVDs because of the butchering of the music.

So many fans seem to hate that episode too but I've always thought it was a great bit of fun. "Public enemy number one? But he only left Tuesday!"

I always find the fact its original airing was after the queen's speech to be quite odd. You'd think such a high budget, ambitious episode would have gone out in prime time, not flung out in the afternoon (and against Coronation Street to boot). The first part the previous day had gone out in the evening.



Miami Twice is particularly bad on DVD. It's not as bad as A Royal Flush where they cut out a quarter of the episode, but it's still bad. A large chunk of the nightclub scene is cut for a start, which renders the scene where Lurch breaks into their camper van very confusing as you never see Del & Rodney telling them that it's theirs, so you wonder why he's breaking in and how he knows it's theirs. And there's also a laugh track dubbed on, similar to with A Royal Flush, drowning out a lot of the dialogue (though it doesn't sound as tinny as the Royal Flush laugh track does).

I'm remembering the BBC One daytime repeats of OFAH from around 10 years back now, where they decided to combine 2 episodes into a 55 minute slot, again with some pretty awful cuts. They did run series 6 and 7 uncut at least though, including the bits that were cut or dubbed over on the DVDs. Gold started using the DVD edits of the episodes (discounting the Christmas specials, apart from A Royal Flush) around the same time as those BBC1 broadcasts for some reason.

Miami Twice was a two part story to celebrate ten years of Only Fools and Horses in 1991. Part One aired on Christmas Eve prime time with Part Two airing straight after the Queen's speech where there would be a very large family audience viewing at that time of the day.

Also in 1991, BBC had paid a whopping fortune to screen the network television premiere of Batman. After paying so much money, they put it on at 6pm prime time Christmas night, kicking out Only Fools to the 3.10pm slot.

As it was all filmed on location and not in studio with an audience, along with the notable change in quality, as it was filmed on film and not videotape as was the case for the normal studio recordings, it gave the audience a different feel to the show.

The worst Only Fools Christmas Special had to be the 1986 one Royal Flush which was rushed into production, and eventually had to be mostly produced on film, with studio scenes filmed without a studio audience present, and laughter track dubbed over it.

John Sullivan said that he was still editing the special right up to Christmas morning, and there was no guarantee that it would make it to air that Christmas night.

Another Bill related thing, just reached the episode where they re-opened the "refurbished" station. Was interesting to see how they phased it in, several weeks of episodes shot in portakabins, a few episodes where prisoners were being housed and some of the officers were working in a nearby station, then some episodes with interior scenes shot in the new sets, but exterior ones still shot on the (scaffolding filled) old one. Admittedly it's hard enough to beleive it's meant to be the same building from the exterior, even after "refurbishment", but it's noticable how the entire surrounding of the station has changed- from a residential area to a clearly newly built industrial estate. The "stick out" bit of the building (which I think was built to hide the hospital entrance) isn't there at this point either.

Also noticed they introduced a new verion of the plodding feet end credits on the episode where we first see the new station. Why they needed to refilm it is beyond me, but it's the third version so far, they introduced a new version at the start of the half hour episodes too.

Just to add, the Royal Flush episode was indeed rushed and also John Sullivan was not present for part of the production of the episode (I can't recall why). He was deeply unhappy with the finished episode as it went out in 1986. The Del Boy character was seen as being too dark. Indeed the original edit of the episode did not have a laughter track at all.

In 2004 the episode was re-edited by John Sullivan for the BBC DVD release. So there are two versions of the episode. The 1986 edit and the 2004 edit. The 2004 edit is around 20 minutes shorter and has a canned laughter track. You can still find the original 1986 edit on video tape releases and on the DVD released with the magazine collection. UK Gold used to show the old edit for many years after but I think it was updated in about 2009. Box set DVDs and other releases are edited per 2004 episode. Personally I prefer the original version as I cannot stand canned laughter, and also think it is more realistic.

I think he was busy working on the final series of Just Good Friends.

Yes, and indeed Just Good Friends was on Christmas Day so he had two shows on one night. As you suggest, because of that I don't think he was able to attend the recording of the scene that everyone hates, so wasn't there to see how they were doing it. Adding to the problems I think both David Jason and Nicholas Lyndhurst fell ill during production, which caused further delays, and it got to the stage where I think there were contingency plans to do it live if they had to. It never came to that, but it was pretty tight.



It looks a bit weird now, but it wasn't madly different from its slot in previous years - in 1989 it was on at 4pm and in 1990 at 5pm. In those days the slot after the Queen's speech was a pretty prestigious one and you could get a big audience there, they would often show their massive film premieres there like Back To The Future and ET and they would get big audiences.

Despite how poor A Royal Flush is, I'd still appreciate us having access to the original version. The edited version pretty butchered, and the laugh track sounds really tinny. I seem to remember reading somewhere that it was recorded at a screening at an OFAH fan convention, and clearly it wasn't a place with good acoustics for recording something like that.

I think the BBC rightly or wrongly let John Sullivan be indulgent with OFAH because it was such a big hit.

One of the other things about the DVD releases with all the iffy edits for music rights, I might be wrong but I think the BBC have since signed an agreement around music rights which means they could potentially re-release them with most of the missing music intact. I imagine it's very unlikely though, sadly. There's some very big and annoying music edits in some episodes like The Jolly Boys Outing, Yuppy Love and Miami Twice in particular, as well as the weak cover of "Our House" dubbed onto Time On Our Hands.

There's also the peculiarity that the DVD version of Sickness and Wealth (which Gold now show as well, seeing as they switched to using the DVD edits of most episodes circa 2011) is an early edit, with several minutes of material not in the as broadcast episode (including the only appearances of Micky and Jeavon in that episode- though Patrick Murray and Steven Woodcock are still credited in the as-aired episode), but without music and sound effects dubbed on- so the Nag's Head scenes sound strangely quiet. Reminds me of a 1992 episode of EastEnders on Drama earlier in the year where they also showed an edit without music dubbed on to a scene, so you had characters dancing to silence.