What Is It: A remake of the much loved sitcom of the same name that saw David Jason and Nicholas Lyndhurst play brothers Derek and Rodney Trotter struggling to make ends meet and often resorting to selling stolen goods and trying ill-fated get rich quick schemes.

Will It Work: I very much doubt it.

Why: When it first hit our screens in 1980, Only Fools And Horses very much captured the nation’s zeitgeist. The Trotters struggled to make ends meet like many people in the 1980s and had to resort to law-breaking to survive. There were also a lot of digs at Margaret Thatcher throughout the series which, again, captured the appeal of many. Replicating that is going to be a tall order given that the world has changed colossally in the past thirty two years. While the overall concept is universal, Only Fools And Horses is by its very nature a period piece. Also, the sadly missed John Sullivan wrote every single episode, quite a few of which were based on his own experiences. As with a lot of Brit-coms, this gave the characters and stories a feel of consistency. With more than a dozen writers working on a single season of a US sitcom, that can’t be achieved. And characterisation was the heart of Only Fools And Horses.

My Prediction: From the information I have so far (e.g. the character of Trigger being a white ghetto-talking con-man), I’m going to predict that it either won’t get past the pilot stage or will get cancelled mid-season. Anything better than that will be a big surprise.

Bad Girls