As One Door Closes

Only Fools and Horses episode
"As One Door Closes"
Series	4
Writer	John Sullivan
Director	Susan Belbin
Producer	Ray Butt
Duration	29:48 (DVD) / 29:00 (iTunes)
Airdate	4 April 1985
Audience	14.2 million

"As One Door Closes" is an episode of the BBC sitcom, Only Fools and Horses. It was the final episode of series 4 and first broadcast on 4 April 1985.

Contents 1 Synopsis 2 Episode concept 3 Production 4 Errors 5 References 6 External links

Synopsis

Del Boy's latest get-rich-quick scheme involves super-sharp combs and louvre doors funded by Denzil's £2,000 redundancy money. But unfortunately, Brendan O' Shaughnessy and Teddy Cummings don't want the louvre doors, which lands Del in hot water with Denzil, who's demanding his money back.

Rodney reads an article about a rare butterfly, and a butterfly collector's desire to catch it and pay a large sum of money to whoever brings it to him. Later, while on the run from Denzil's angry brothers, they see the butterfly in the local cemetery. Rodney eventually captures it in the lake of the nearby park.

He hands it to Del Boy, but Denzil, after hearing that Del has got him his money back, skates by and gives Del a high five, crushing the butterfly - much to the annoyance of Rodney.

Episode concept

• The idea for the script was based on a true story of a rare butterfly that John Sullivan had read about.^[1]

Production

• This episode contains a rare instance of the series using video rather than film for location scenes. This came about because the location sequences in some of the earlier episodes this series (most notably Hole in One) had been pre-filmed with Lennard Pearce prior to his death. When Buster Merryfield joined the series, the earlier episodes had to be refilmed, which left them with only enough money to film half of the location sequences in this episode. The BBC agreed to cover the budget shortfall, but on the condition that video be used instead of film, due to its lower cost.

Errors

• At the scene when the Trotters visit their mother Joan's gravestone, the bench is several footsteps away and the ground directly behind the bench is clear, yet in "The Yellow Peril" when Del and Rodney visit Joan's grave, the bench is one step away from the elaborate gravestone, and also directly behind the bench are other gravestones, clearly a different cemetery.

References

External links

• "As One Door Closes" at BBC Online

Preceded by "Watching the Girls Go By"

Only Fools and Horses 4 April 1985

Succeeded by "White Mice"

Only Fools and Horses Series 4 episodes "Happy Returns" "Strained Relations" "Hole in One" "It's Only Rock and Roll" "Sleeping Dogs Lie" "Watching the Girls Go By" "As One Door Closes"