BBC Only Fools and Horses' one huge failure as Raquel star blasts 'not surprising'

An Only Fools and Horses star has revealed why the hit BBC sitcom failed to gain traction in the US, despite its massive success back home.

Tessa Peake-Jones, who played Raquel, the girlfriend of the iconic Del Boy (Sir David Jason), reflected on the reasons behind the show’s struggles across the pond during her appearance on Loose Women.

Tessa, who joined the sitcom in its fifth series and stayed until the series finale in 2003, was part of a show that featured one of the most beloved comedic duos in British television history, Del Boy and his bumbling brother Rodney (Nicholas Lyndhurst).

But while Only Fools and Horses was a household name in the UK, it never quite made the same impact in the US. Despite the show wrapping up over 20 years ago, its cultural legacy still sparks plenty of questions.

After chatting about her role in Grantchester, Loose Women host Janet Street-Porter told her, “And of course, all around the world, your performance in Only Fools and Horses lives on because that series went absolutely global and it's still being shown now.”

"It's being shown everywhere!" Tessa replied, before adding a reflection on the one place where it didn’t quite resonate.

“The only place it didn’t sort of – I suppose, not that surprising – didn’t take off was America,” she said. “And apparently that was because they didn’t understand the cockney accents... and a different sense of humour as well, yeah.”

Janet added: "Do people still come up to you and call you Raquel?" prompting Tessa to reply with a chuckle, "Sometimes, yeah. Or they’ll go, ‘Are you like that one who played Raquel?’ Because we’re ageing!"

The notion that Only Fools failed to make a mark in the US has been explored before. In 2012, US network ABC dropped plans for an American remake, Kings of Van Nuys, starring John Leguizamo in a Del Boy-inspired role. Sir David Jason discussed the adaptation’s difficulties at the time.

“There’s a possibility it might work, but you’ve got to change it so much that, in the change, in order to Americanise it, do you lose the whole concept of the piece?” Sir David said in 2012.

“The language will have to change so much and there will be so many parts of the storyline you have to change. It’s so London and so British, [in] its humour, that you wonder.

It’s London-based, and it took quite a long time for the rest of the country to catch up with the phrases. I have no idea what the American equivalent of 'plonker' is, for example. Or 'dipstick.'"

However, Nicholas Lyndhurst, who portrayed Rodney,  is getting his taste of Hollywood as he is currently appearing in the Frasier reboot alongside Kelsey Grammer.

When asked if this could lead to a permanent move to the US, Lyndhurst made it clear, “No, no, no. I’m just here for the duration of the show. I’ll go home to the UK afterwards, but it’s absolutely wonderful to be here for now.

"I’m in my mid-60s – at this stage of my career, I wasn’t expecting to be walking through the gates of Paramount Pictures every morning.

"I probably pinch myself every 20 minutes in this job, because working with Kelsey and working in this building is heart-stoppingly wonderful.”