Cert:

Cat.no: BBCDVD 1046

Running time: 236 minutes

Year: 1983

Pressing: 2001

Region(s): 2, 4 (UK PAL)

Chapters: 48 plus extras

Sound: Dolby Digital 2.0 (Stereo)

Languages: English

Subtitles: English for the deaf and hard of hearing

Fullscreen: 4:3

16:9-enhanced: No

Macrovision: No

Disc Format: DVD 10

Price: £19.99

Extras: None

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Director:

Ray Butt

Producer:

Ray Butt

Screenplay:

John Sullivan

Music:

Ronnie Hazelhurst

Cast:

Derek 'Del Boy' Trotter: David Jason
Rodney Trotter: Nicholas Lyndhurst
Grandad: Lennard Pearce
Trigger: Roger Lloyd Pack
Mike: Kenneth MacDonald
Denzil: Paul Barber
Mickey Pearce: Patrick Murray
Boycie: John Challis
Marlene: Sue Holderness

Definitely not a plonker - Only Fools and Horses Series 3.

The three members of the Only Fools and Horses clan return for the complete third series of wheeler-dealer Del Boy (David Jason), plonker Rodney (Nicholas Lyndhurst) and old-timer Grandad (Lennard Pearce), first broadcast from November 10th to Christmas Day, 1983.

The series combines eight episodes on this disc starting with Homesick where Grandad becomes ill and Rodney becomes the chairman of the housing committee, then in Healthy Competition he sets himself up as a rival to Del's Trotters' Independent Trading. In Friday the 14th the family Trotter are off to Cornwall to stay at Boycie's house, but watch out for the mad axe murderer! Yesterday Never Comes sees Del dealing in works of art but in the glamourous Miranda, has she taken a tumble for his charms or will he be taken for a fool?

In May the Force Be With You, Del squares up to old school enemy Slater, now a policeman, then Rodney becomes the 'Peckham Pouncer', London's most wanted criminal in Wanted. Who's a Pretty Boy finds the boys doing a favour for Denzil, leading to a canary catastrophe and, finally, Thicker Than Water is the 1983 Christmas episode and Del and Rodney's father returns to the fold after 18 years.

Almost twenty years have passed since the original broadcast of this series. The picture quality's the same as series 1 and 2 - a little on the soft side and now it's in stereo, not that that makes a great deal of difference, although the dialogue is a little more clear. The average bitrate is approximately 4.45Mb/s for each episode.

There are six chapters per episode, totalling 48 in all and the dialogue and subtitles are English only.

This time round, instead of being on a single-sided dual-layer disc (DVD 9), reverse those two to give you a dual-sided single-layer disc (DVD 10) for seemingly no reason at all given that there's only a handful of minutes in length between this series and the last. Also, the DVD main title on each side of the disc is "OFAH SERIES 2 DISC 1". Eh?

What was also extremely weird is that I wasn't able to view the menus on either side of the disc. My DVD-ROM piped up with "This program encounters an error while navigating the DVD Video disc.", so I had to delve in deep to pick each episode out individually.

There aren't any extras, but £19.99 is still well worth it for four hours of a great comedy series.

FILM CONTENT PICTURE QUALITY SOUND QUALITY EXTRAS	0
OVERALL

Review copyright © Dominic Robinson, 2001.

The following is a list of all the Only Fools And Horses DVDs reviewed online to date, plus the Christmas Special 2001: