As One Door Closes

"As One Door Closes"
Only Fools and Horses episode
250 px
Episode no.	Series 4 Episode 7
Directed by	Susan Belbin
Written by	John Sullivan
Produced by	Ray Butt
Original air date	4 April 1985 (14.2 million viewers)
Running time	29:48 (DVD) / 29:00 (iTunes)

"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. In the episode, Del and Rodney hunt for a rare butterfly.

Synopsis

Del Boy's latest get-rich-quick scheme involves super-sharp combs and louvre doors funded by Denzil's £2,000 redundancy money, which was forcibly attained by Del. 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 cast

Actor	Role
David Jason	Derek Trotter
Nicholas Lyndhurst	Rodney Trotter
Buster Merryfield	Uncle Albert Trotter
Paul Barber	Denzil
Doug Rowe	Man in crowd
Patrick Wright	Walk on ( in the market scene )

Episode concept

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

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.

External links

• "As One Door Closes" at BBC Online