Tea for Three Episode Review
Brief: Del’s tampered with, the sun-bed controls and Rodney’s seeing red – literally His face is done to a turn. He’ll hardly wow Trigger’s niece, Lisa, with his handsome good looks now, which leaves the way pretty clear for Del himself But revenge should certainly be sweet when he volunteers Del for a spot of hang-gliding.
Transmitted: 21.09.1986
Duration: 30 minutes
Viewing Figures: 16.5 million
Trigger’s young niece, Lisa, is staying with him for a while, and the scruffy young girl that Del and Rodney remember has now become a stunning 25 year-old woman.
Both Trotter brothers think they are in with a chance, and immediately begin competing for Lisa’s affections. Despite almost coming to blows, Del and Rodney manage to invite Lisa round to the flat for tea, and she seems more than happy to accept.
In preparation for their date with Lisa, Del goes out to get some more ‘Smash’ and Rodney spends half-an-hour on the sunbed. Just before Del leaves for the shops, he notices Rodney has dozed off and whacks up the heat on the bed.
Much to Rodney’s annoyance, he spends most of the evening nursing his bright red face, which has burnt under the ultra-violet rays, whilst Del and Lisa seem to be getting on really well. To get his revenge, Rodders picks up on the fact that Lisa mentions she was going hang-gliding, and as a surprise for his 46th birthday, he arranges for Del to have a go.
After offering to give her a left back home to Winchester, Del and Rodney head off to meet Lisa’s friends for a spot of hang-gliding. Not wanting to loose face, Del reluctantly agrees to try it out, and after launching himself into the air, he disappears for over 12 hours.
Episode Observations
- In Tea for Three, When The hanglider scene was filmed David Jason wanted to actually fly the glider himself, he is a trained glider pilot, scuba diver, and swims with dolphins! But the BBC said it was too dangerous for him to fly it, for insurance reasons!
- In Tea for Three, Trigger says that Del landed in Redhill after the hang gliding trip. Del then states that he “did loop-the-loop over Dymchurch”, and let’s not forget that he took off from near Winchester. The likelihood of Del travelling from Winchester to Dymchurch, then doubling back to Redhill is very slender, especially in the twelve hours he’s missing for.
- In Tea for Three, Trigger’s niece Lisa says that she is 25, so that would have made her born about 1961. However in the 1991 episode “Chance Of A Lunchtime” Trig’s younger sister, Lisa’s mother, has had her 39th birthday. By then Lisa would be about 30. So Trig’s sister had Lisa when she was only nine then. How likely is that).
- In Tea for Three, I taped the original episode from TV and Del and Rodney are trying to chat up Lisa at the Nags Head and there is a talent contest going on, Albert is in it and anounces that he would like to dedicate his song to someone who couldn’t be with him tonight he says he would like to sing “Ada” (to which everyone says that haven’t heard of “Ada”). He then sings Ada….you with the stars in your eyes (instead of Hey there) anyway on the bought copy of the video this is completely missing and the following scene back at the flat has Rodney mentioning the talent contest so unless you have seen the original episode you won’t know what they are on about.
- In Tea for Three, Rodney says he remembers Lisa (Trigs Niece) from years back, but in Big Brother (A few years back), Rodney has to be introduced to Trig as if they had never met before.
- In Tea for Three, at the begining of the episode, the pianist and drummer are clearly not playing in line with the sound track.
- In Tea for Three, When Del & Rodney are talking to Andy on the hill just befor Del goes hang-gliding look at the first shot of Andy, over his shoulder the Trotter van is in full view. The shot then turns to Del & Rodney when it goes back to Andy magic no van!
- In Tea for Three, Why does Rodney look on a map to see where Del has ended up hang-gliding, he could be anywhere so the map has no significance.
Tea for Three Script
The script will be downloadable from here
Arguably the best 30 minute episode
At this point it became evident that with a 50 minute slot only fools could go a lot further as some of John Sullivan’s plots and comedy genius was clearly being hampered with just 30 minutes