One Foot in the Grave

"I don't believe it!," uttered in an indescribable lilt, became one of the Britain's great comedy catch phrases in the early 1990s. It was uttered by Victor Meldrew, a sort of elderly Basil Fawlty, brilliantly played by Richard Wilson.

Forced into taking early retirement, Victor tries to adjust to these unwanted final years of leisure with his wife Margaret. He takes odd jobs, helps out with good causes and generally tries to make himself busy. He tries to believe, despite all evidence to the contrary, that things will turn out all right.

He is invariably wrong about this, and the pleasure of each episode is to watch the way wild coincidences, complex misunderstandings, bureaucratic inefficiencies, and sheer, awesomely bad luck conspire to send him into increasingly bizarre and farcical situations.