14 Responses to “Strained Relations”

  1. John Campbell says:

    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

  2. Roy Wood says:

    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?

    • Shell says:

      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.

    • Rob M says:

      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.

  3. Mystery Bidder says:

    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.

  4. Sam says:

    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.

  5. Darren says:

    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.

    • Griff says:

      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?

      • Darren says:

        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).

  6. Jenny says:

    Thanks again, love!

  7. admin says:

    Hi Jenny – try it now

  8. Jenny says:

    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.

  9. admin says:

    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.

    • Rob M says:

      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.

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