Only Fools and Horses is a British television sitcom, created and written by John Sullivan, and made and broadcast by the BBC. Seven series were originally broadcast in the UK between 1981 and 1991, with sporadic Christmas specials until 2003. After a relatively slow start the show went on to achieve consistently high ratings, and the 1996 episode "Time On Our Hands" holds the record for the highest UK audience for a sitcom episode.

Set in the inner city London district of Peckham, it starred David Jason as ambitious market trader Derek "Del Boy" Trotter, Nicholas Lyndhurst as his younger brother Rodney and Lennard Pearce as their aging grandfather (and later Buster Merryfield as their Uncle Albert). Backed by a strong support cast, it chronicled their highs and lows in life, particularly their attempts to get rich.

Critically and popularly acclaimed, the series received numerous awards, including recognition from the British Academy, the National Television Awards and the Royal Television Society, as well as helping both Sullivan and Jason win individual accolades. It was voted Britain's Best Sitcom in a 2004 BBC poll.

It also had an impact on British culture, contributing several words to the English language and helping to popularise the Reliant Regal van. It spawned an extensive range of merchandise, including books, DVDs, toys and board games

   
Derek "Del Boy" Trotter was a fast-talking, archetypal cockney market trader, living in a council flat in a high-rise tower block, Nelson Mandela House, in Peckham, South London with his much younger brother, Rodney, and their elderly Grandad. Their mother Joan died when Rodney was young, and their father Reg absconded shortly after his wife's death, effectively making Del Rodney's surrogate father and the family patriarch. Despite the difference in their ages, the brothers share a constant bond throughout.

The situation focuses primarily on their futile attempts to get rich - "This time next year, we'll be millionaires" is a frequent saying of Del's - through buying and selling a variety of low-quality and illegal goods, such as Russian Army camcorders, luminous yellow paint and sex dolls filled with an explosive gas. They own an unregistered company, Trotters Independent Traders, trade primarily on the black market and generally neither pay taxes nor claim money from the state; as Del says "the government don't give us nothing, so we don't give the government nothing". Most of their deals are too dodgy to succeed and usually end up backfiring, an important factor in generating sympathy for the characters

David plays a stereotypical market trader, who would sell anything to anyone to earn money, and was the driving force behind the Trotters' attempts to become rich. Sharp-witted, image-conscious and self-confident, but lacking in the required nous to realise his high ambitions, he was invariably a failure.

Del's cultural pretensions, best seen in his use of inaccurate French phrases, were equally wanting. He nonetheless had endearing features, especially his "lovable loser" qualities and his devotion and loyalty to his family, which saw him take care of Rodney and Grandad on his own from the age of 16. However, this gave him a tendency to emotionally blackmail Rodney with the memories of their mother, often trying to manipulate him with the line "Mum said to me on her death bed....."

Ostensibly popular with women - his poor choice in women was another running gag - Del never settled down with one until he met Raquel, with whom he had a son, Damien.

Sullivan later said he had always been fascinated by the unlicensed traders who sold goods from suitcases, and it was them on which he based Del Boy. David Jason himself added elements of a similar man he had known when working as an electrician to the part, including Del's cheap gold jewellery and his camel-hair coat.[9] Jason was a relatively late candidate for the part, with Jim Broadbent (who would later appear in a minor recurring role as DCI Roy Slater), Enn Reitel and Billy Murray all earlier preferences. It was only when producer Ray Butt saw a repeat of Open All Hours that Jason was considered and, despite initial concerns over his ability - at that point, Jason had not had a leading television role - and the fact that he and Lyndhurst did not look alike, he was cast.

Only Fools and Horses won the BAFTA for best comedy series in 1986, 1989 and 1997, was nominated in 1984, 1987, 1990, 1991 and 1992, and won the audience award in 2004. David Jason received individual BAFTAs for his portrayal of Del Boy in 1991 and 1997. The series won a National Television Award in 1997 for most popular comedy series; Jason won two individual awards, in 1997 and 2002. It won the RTS best comedy award in 1997, best BBC sit-com at the 1990 British Comedy Awards, and two Television and Radio Industries Club awards for comedy programme of the year in 1984 and 1997. John Sullivan won the Writers' Guild of Great Britain comedy award for the 1996 Christmas trilogy and another from the Heritage Foundation in 2001

The show regularly features in polls to find the most popular comedy series, moments and characters. It was voted Britain's Best Sitcom in a 2004 BBC viewer's poll, and came 45th in the British Film Institute's list of the 100 Greatest British Television Programmes. It was 3rd on a subsequent viewers' poll on the BFI website. It was also named the funniest British sit-com of all time through a scientific formula, in a study by UKTV Gold. Scenes such as Del Boy's fall through a bar flap in "Yuppy Love" and the Trotters accidentally smashing a priceless chandelier in "A Touch of Glass" have become iconic British comedy moments, invariably topping polls of comedy viewers.

Del Boy was voted the most popular British television character of all time in a survey by Open and came 4th in a Channel 4 list of Britain's best-loved television characters.