Still Open All Hours most watched programme for that week. It received generally poor reviews from critics. Will Dean of "The Independent", referencing Arkwright's trademark stutter, called it "a w-w-worthy effort" but criticised the attempt to revive the show without the late Ronnie Barker. Ben Lawrence of "The Telegraph" said it "felt like a relic of another era" criticising the jokes and Jason's performance. Jacob Mason, writing on the Radio Times website, described the show as "warmly nostalgic", whilst others noted it as "a fitting tribute to Ronnie Barker". On 21 November 2014, the BBC confirmed that "Still Open All Hours" would return for
Ronnie Barker accepted on merit and not just because he, as a star of the programme, had written them; he continued this tradition with the material he wrote later in his career. Barker brought his sketches in, claiming they had come from Wiley through Barker's agent Peter Eade, and they were very well received. To maintain the deception, Barker had criticised material he himself had submitted under the pseudonym; when a Wiley-credited sketch about a ventriloquist had been poorly received by the audience Barker told Corbett "Well, Gerald Wiley let us down there", and on another occasion, when looking at a script,