I preferred the show without Raquel and Cassandra (more specifically Raquel) and also prefer Grandad to Uncle Albert but Sullivan's writing peaked at Series 6 for me.
Jolly Boys Outing is probably my favourite and technically both the women are in that episode but neither play a major role.
OFAH went majorly downhill after The Jolly Boys Outing and only really had the 96 Trilogy which could compare with the earlier series. S7 was very poor and my least favourite series by a mile, as was the 92 and 93 Xmas Specials. I didn't care about the drama/family side of things,
See, as a 19 year-old I never got the opportunity to watch the episodes broadcast live, and I think that's why a significant amount of people hate the final trilogy, whereas I didn't find them that bad, (although the sunset ending would admittedly have been perfect), and the same goes for any of the episodes, because I watched them all for the first time collectively. I think the year wait for a lot of the latter episodes made people more critical, but I'm only guessing that. There's not a single OFAH episode I don't enjoy, some aren't as good as others as is always the case in any series.
I actually preferred Uncle Albert when compared to him and Grandad.
I was thinking of that scene in the cafe earlier. The one where Denzil is disgusted after finding a hair in his porridge, only for Trigger to come up behind him and say "I think I'll have some of that porridge, cheers Sid"
. I think it's the same scene in which he talks about having the same broom for twenty years.
"That's a long time, Dave"
"Yeah, well it's two decades, ain't it"
"I wouldn't go that far!"