It's February 1960 in Orchard Street, Peckham, and the glamorous Joan Trotter is off to work at the Ritz Cinema, strutting down the road with her clickety-clack heels and swinging hips, drawing disdainful glances from her jealous neighbours.

Through a leafy country lane, a 1959 Jaguar Mark 9 races towards London with Freddie "The Frog" Robdal at the wheel, Gerald "Jelly" Kelly alongside.

And a young Del Boy sits with his mates Trigger, Boycie, Denzil and Jumbo Mills polishing off their half-pints of beer while Bobby Day's Rockin' Robin plays on the jukebox of the Nag's Head.

Joan Trotter is stuck in a loveless marriage to the workshy Reg, her only escape is the movies, working as an usherette at the Ritz Cinema and losing herself in the glamour of the black-and-white films on the silver screen.

Here she shares a joke with her friend Reenie and does her best to evade the "hands on" approach to uniform inspections from her manager, Mr Raynor. Outside, life is hard as she holds down two jobs to feed her family including Reg's dad, who has moved in with them.

Then Freddie arrives back in town, fresh from a stay at Her Majesty's Pleasure. He soon spots Joan and starts to befriend the family, offering Reg work as a way to ingratiate himself. But he also has big plans which need paying for... despite his best intentions to stay on the straight and narrow!

Meanwhile, Del is making use of his new friend Denzil's dockyard connections, taking care of "damaged" stock that's arrived from America. LPs, watches, clothes, and even some brand new carpet, Del can sell anything: "I guarantee you, one day I'm gonna be a millionaire," he boldly claims.

This bittersweet love story sheds new light on the lives of South London's most famous family, the Trotters.

Our Review: Writer John Sullivan describes the show thus: "Rock & Chips is set in the real Sixties, before The Beatles and Mary Quant made London the coolest place on the planet. The drama features South London at its least glamorous, where money was scarce, the staple diet was rock salmon and chips, and the flicks offer the only hint of glamour. And it gives us a bit of an insight into why Del and Rodney turned out they way they did."

Was this prequel a good idea? We're not sure.

Some are likely to have been disappointed, coming to the show expecting a sitcom similar to Only Fools and Horses, when it was actually a light comedy drama. But for die-hard OFAH fans the show did fill in the back-story to the characters quite neatly, and those that came to the show with no-preconceptions, i.e. having never seen OFAH (if that is possible), are likely to have been entertained.