Strained Relations Episode Review
Brief: After Granddad’s funeral, Delboy & Rodney are surprised to find that his brother, Uncle Albert, has moved in with them – bringing his nautical nightmares.
Transmitted: 28.02.1985
Duration: 30 minutes
Viewing Figures: 14.9 million
While the Trotter brothers try to cope with their Grandad’s unexpected death, his funeral provides a surprise addition to their flat in Mandela House.
Among the mourners – who have come from as far away as North London – are Del’s cousins Jean and Stan, and they’re accompanied by Grandad Trotter’s brother, Uncle Albert.
During the wake at the flat, Rodney seems disturbed by the jovial behaviour and good humour of the mourners. To distract himself he listens to salty old sea dog Albert’s stories of his exploits in the Navy.
As the wake comes to an end, it appears that Jean and Stan have neglected to take Albert home with them to North London, so Del decides to let him stay the night. The next day it appears that Jean and Stan have gone for good and want nothing to do with Albert. Despite feeling sorry for the old man, Del is reluctant to let him stay and ships Albert off to the Seaman’s Mission.
It’s not long before Albert returns to the flat, as the Seaman’s mission has been razed to the ground. So Del reluctantly lets the old boy move in, and a new era begins for the Trotters.
Episode Observations
- In Strained Relations, At the wake for Grandad back in the flat, i noticed the silouhette of one of the cameras on the door as Del is staring into the hall, just before Mike tells him he is leaving. You can then c the shadow of the camera moving away from another camera angle.
- In Strained Relations, When Uncle Albert brings his haversack of belongings back to the flat after he has been abandoned it is very light (demonstrated by the way dell chucks it into the porch) – however, nearly four years later in ‘Dates’ when Uncle Albert brings out his black box which contains some pieces of his life history – it looks pretty weighty to say the least. Dell must have been strong to hurl that accross the room!!-it also dosn’t make a loud crash when the bag hits the floor, which I am sure it would!.
- In Strained Relations, when he takes Uncle Albert back to North London, Del is wearing the same shirt that he wore in the opening scene of ‘Homesick’.
- In Strained Relations, we see Rodney taking the batteries out of the flat on to the landing before someone falls over them. You can see Uncle albert sitting on the batteries in the corner of the landing but in ‘Time On Our Hands’ when Mickey and Denzil are carrying the furniture out of the flat you can see the wall begins where the door frame ends.
- In Strained Relations, At the wake after grandads funeral del is standing at the door leading to the bedrooms when he is called away,as he walks away back into the livingroom, if you look at the door you can see the tv cameras shadow on the door.
- In Strained Relations, the very first scene shows flowers from Del and Rodney. Note the typical Trotter spelling of the word thoughts – “always in our foughts”.
- In Strained Relations, ‘Lee Nicholson’ comments on that Del turns on the TV twice but he doesn’t, Del turns on the two different TVs.
- In Strained Relations, Del is seen putting the TV on twice without turning it off. Firstly at the point where Rodney threatens to go to the cafe, and secondly after Del argues with Rodney.
- In Strained Relations, also while Del is turning the TV on, on two occasions clearly the TV’s have been moved from there original places, also the drinks are moved to a different area, taking into account the different camera angles.
- In Strained Relations, another item to notice while Del is turning the TV on, on two occasions is the snacks from the earlier gathering. Clearly there were far more sausages on the TV the first time the TV was turned on, as compared to the second time Del turned the TV on. (It’s quite likely the TV crew became peckish after humping the TV around to different positions in the room — See previous observations).
- In Strained Relations, Rodney wears the same shirt as he did 3½ years ago in “Big Brother”.
- In Strained Relations, During the wake that Del boy was sitting thinking near to the door leading to the bedrooms, the camera couldn’t move out of view quick enough.
Strained Relations Script
The script will be downloadable from here
Did You Know?
This episode was added at the last minute, due to Lennards death, a secound episode was added Happy Returns during his hospital illness, there fore leaving the producers with 8 instead of the standard 6 episodes in the series.
From Prussia with Love was moved to Series 5 leaving 7 episodes in series 4.
In the last scene Del orders half a lager but they leave the pub at the end of the scene without Rodney drinking any of it and leaving a full glass behind. This seemed to happen in a lot of episodes
Del Boy says to Albert in “Strained Relations” that he can’t sleep in Grandad’s room as he wanted to leave it exactly as Grandad left it and no one was going to stay in that room again but yet in 2001 Christmas Special “If They Could See Us Now” Rodney and Cassandra are in that room and that bed of Grandad’s and Del Boy say’s “Grandad had his first fit in that bed!”
So, either when he said that when no one was allowed in there ever again he didn’t literally mean forever and just a couple of years to give him time to grieve or he had forgotten that no one was allowed in there ever again.
I know this sounds a little bit silly and petty but it is just something that I noticed when watching this episode recently and was wondering if anyone else has spotted this?
I just assumed he meant it at the time but eventually relented as Albert has been seen going in or coming out of there in a few episodes. The ones I remember off the top of my head are “Watching The Girls Go By” when they are talking about the bet during dinner, he gets up from the table, goes into the room and comes out with a photo. Then in “Dates, at the beginning of the episode, he comes out of the room with a box and proceeds to ‘hint’ about his upcoming birthday.
I dont think Del meant it as in ‘forever’. He just meant it for a little while as he came to terms with grandads death.
During the scene when Del and Albert return to the flat watch Del closely. In some shots he is wearing his rings and some shots he isn’t.
In a strange sort of way, this is probably one of my favourite episodes. As the episode progresses, especially during the scenes at the cemetery and the flat, you can see that the actors are not characters mourning the “death” of another character, but themselves mourning the death of one of their friends. The affection that David and Nicholas had for Lennard is probably highlighted the most during this episode, and I believe that their scenes of mourning are very much genuine. This episode highlights the great writing and the great acting of the show, and the real togetherness that the cast had.
I was in the studio audience for ‘Strained Relations’. I will never forget what a magical experience it was, to see such a great OFAH episode being recorded right in front of my own eyes! I do remember that the end titles was played out on a crude contraption in the studio, which housed a scroll of these end titles, which scrolled through (with a studio camera pointing at this scroll), as the closing music was played out, along with our applause being recorded. Could never understand why the end title footage was not already pre-recorded onto VT. Perhaps some others have similar recollections of this contraption.
Wow – not many people can boast that they’ve actually watched a live recording of OFAH.
I’ve always been intrigued as to how the switching of scenes occur from studio to outside. Do the lights go down and you watch the outdoor scenes on a screen then once that outdoor scene is over, switch back to the live stuff in the studio?
It was a long time ago, Griff, and I cannot remember 100% if the lights actually went down or not as we viewed the exterior filmed scenes of the episode on the monitors, but yes, it proceeded pretty much in the way you have said.
There were multiple monitors positioned high enough over the studio audience to enable us to see the screens, while not hampering our viewing of the studio set. The studio audience saw the episode in the correct sequence. Obviously, all outdoor filmed scenes of the episode were already ‘in the can’. So, for instance, the beginning outdoor scenes of Grandad’s funeral were shown on the monitors for the studio audience to view, then the recording of the next interior scene was shot, as soon as cast and cameramen etc were ready, and that was how it went on throughout the episode.
I remember that at the end of many scenes, after ‘cut’ was heard, Nick Lyndhurst and David Jason pulled faces as the cameras were still on them! You could see their faces via the monitors, which, incidentally, were always on, showing the camera shots being recorded to VT. I assume this was to help keep the audience ‘warmed up’.
That reminds me, the warm-up man, who came out before the recording of the episode, was Felix Bowness (of ‘Hi-de-Hi’ fame).
Thanks again, love!
Hi Jenny – try it now
I can’t open the script! Can you fix it? Oh, most of the other scripts are a bit dodgy as well…I can’t open them neither.
In Strained Relations, the opening music intro normally shows pictures of the main characters e.g. (Del, Rodney, Granddad) or (Del, Rodney, Uncle Albert), but unusually even though Albert was in this episode, they decided not to replace Granddads picture by Uncle Albert’s.
Also during the opening credits of the episode ‘cash and curry’ from series 1 – you dont see grandad’s picture during the opening credits/intro.