John Sullivan

Yeah, shit.

We mused over this a little bit in our series six wrap, but I'll say it again, because as far as I read, there was no actual decision made by the BBC or John Sullivan or anybody else to end it after series seven or end the series after series seven.

It just sort of happened that way.

And it's more likely because, you know, as we've said a few times, John Sullivan never knew when it was the last episode.

And we definitely talked about this quite a lot last week at the end of Three Men, a Woman and a Baby, because in lots of ways, Three Men, a Woman and a Baby could easily have been the last episode.

It actually, yeah, it didn't end up.

At least

that was the case until another trilogy was aired in the early 2000s.

in Future Minder as well, doesn't it? That Arthur doesn't like hospitals and, you know.

And again, a bit of a crossover with Only Fools and Horses, maybe John Sullivan, because Del Boy hates hospitals and that sort of thing.

There's a bit of a crossover with the main character.

Yeah, hadn't thought about that, but that is true.

Gareth Gwendolyn says that the mom of the chosen baby was thrilled that her new baby was going to appear on the telly.

John Sullivan used a lot of his own memories of his wife in labor and the birth of their first child to help him create the emotional scenes at the end of this episode.

He also had a mate that had taken his newborn baby across to the window under the stars to show his dad, who had recently passed away, and really wanted to use it because he thought this was a very Del thing to do.

Much more on this scene in the episode breakdown.

Additional filming days were added to the Series 7 location shooting schedule to allow the cast to spend four days filming an actual hospital.

The studio shoot for the non-hospital scenes took place on Sunday the 20th and Monday the 21st of January 1991, fairly close to the air date.

And finally for now, according to the lovely jubbly book, John Sullivan was conscious here of writing a neat and upbeat ending for the show in this episode.

We've discussed this many times before, but there was always the fear that the show would not return and that Sullivan really wanted this happy ending for Del.

It does say in Lovely Jubbly that Buster Merrifield perhaps lost a little screen time due to the addition of Raquel and Cassandra, but here he moves directly into centre stage.

John Sullivan was inspired by events at the time surrounding crime, targeting elderly people in rundown areas, and he had considered how a storyline like this could explore another side of Albert's character.

Buster Merrifield credits John Sullivan's writing, and Sullivan credits Buster Merrifield's acting.

I think it's a wonderful melding of the two that brings us the magic in this episode.

Many will know this, but Buster Murrayfield actually was a former boxing champion and remained in good shape into his older years.

So 31 shocked me a little bit.

yeah that's true okay so do you want to talk a little bit about why this is your what did you say 14 it's my number 14 yeah

yeah i mean like i just i touched on a couple of things just then about the nostalgia aspect of it and the car and stuff it just had very fond memories of this episode from when i was a child so i know i loved it i loved the storyline as well when i was a kid But the main reason I would say this is so high for me is the fact that, as John Sullivan had said, it was like the Buster Merrifield central episode.