One Foot in the Grave: Season 6

Priceless moments of peevishness and spleen, vexed relations with workmen and neighbours, and surreal farce combined to make One Foot In The Grave one of the biggest comedy hits of the 1990s.
This final series includes all the regular cast members: Richard Wilson as Victor, Annette Crosbie as his long-suffering wife Margaret, Doreen Mantle as unfortunate friend Mrs Warboys, Owen Brenman as well-meaning but odd neighbour Mr Swainey, Angus Deayton and Janine Duvitski as former neighbours Patrick and Pippa, with guest appearances in Episode 6 by Hannah Gordon and comedian Paul Merton.

Episode 1 - . The Executioner's Song - With Margaret embarking on a job as a part-time carer and Victor devoting all his energies to his new windowcleaning round, life in the Meldrew household is in a state of relative equilibrium. But inviting their old neighbours out for a meal at a Chinese restaurant was never destined to smooth relations between Victor and Patrick, and by the end of a very bizarre evening, Pippa finds herself drawn into an adulterous affair that threatens to wreck her marriage. It's not an auspicious start to Patrick's birthday, and things take a marked turn for the worse when Victor turns up with a present - the bottom lining of a bird cage, complete with droppings, in a tasteful frame. Meanwhile,Victor's window-cleaning prowess has been badly reviewed in the local parish magazine and one by one his customers fall by the wayside. Once again victim to the worst excesses of human insensitivity, his routine battles over televisions, zips and wallpaper seem to pale into insignificance.

Episode 2 - Tales of Terror - Victor prepares to do battle with the builders who have dashed his plans for a nice, new barbecue and unceremoniously dumped a pile of bricks across the path of his front garden. What with this and the worry about the results of his test to investigate "a generally irritable bowel", he has hardly had time to notice that his new car has an obscene number plate.Then there's the continuing irritation of friends and neighbours who always want to "meet up". Ronnie and Mildred have once again threatened to descend upon the Meldrew household, which means they can't answer the telephone. And Mrs Warboys and her incontinent cousin, Wilf, have invited Victor and Margaret for a meal. After telling them they are going to a funeral that day, Margaret ends up spending the afternoon in the cupboard under the stairs hiding from them.The worst is yet to come.Victor receives some quite devastating news when he pops round to Nick Swainey's house to rehearse for an amateur dramatic production of Nosferatu The Vampyre, and later Ronnie calls in great distress.

Episode 3 - The Futility Of The Fly - Exhibitionist cleaner Katy (Katy Carmichael) has written a play about her larger-than-life employers but the director thinks it's too far-fetched. He hasn't met the Meldrews... Another typical week in the life of Victor Meldrew begins when a visit to the fish shop unleashes all manner of nameless horrors. Glossing over the question of what Mrs Warboys actually found in her bag of chips, Victor is horrified when Enrico, the shop's owner, asks him to choose between the two women he loves. After an unspeakable ordeal in the Meldrews' bathroom, Mrs Warboys is nervously preparing to meet her new dentist, highly recommended by Katy. It's only later that Victor discovers he has booked her an appointment with a tattooist! And then there is the riddle of the huge,mysterious package which Victor is about to collect from the post office...

Episode 4 - Threatening Weather - In a routine act of callous indifference, fate has decided that the hottest night of the year is an appropriate occasion to deprive the Meldrews of their electricity supply. With no light and no power to supply the television or the three new heavy-duty electric fans Victor bought that very morning, there is nothing left for him to do but while away the evening with a litany of complaints about mankind in general and faulty lampshades in particular. On the plus side, there are no weather forecasts to watch."What's the point of knowing it's going to rain in the afternoon," says Victor, "It only stops you enjoying the sunshine in the morning." On the minus side, the Meldrews face an impending visit from their elderly neighbour: "The Hindenberg on legs."

Episode 5 - The Dawn of Man - Victor's decision to take up fishing leads to an encounter with Man at his most primitive. After watching in impotent fury as a carload of rubbish is dumped into the river, he gets his own back by tipping maggots over the offender's pub lunch.Then there's Dodgy Douglas, proprietor of the local corner shop who has been filling Victor's bags with more than just dubious meat products. Meanwhile, a three-week visit by Patrick's gay twin brother Nigel has left Pippa feeling mentally and physically exhausted. He is exactly like Patrick, and Patrick has been bad enough lately - she thinks he is turning into another Victor Meldrew.Or is he turning into Nigel - after Patrick sits on a cork,Victor has trouble telling them apart. Nick Swainey, who is trying to sell his house, is feeling strangely unsettled since Margaret showed him a picture of an American news reporter who looks just like him. And Victor has to don a hasty disguise when a prospective purchaser turns out to be the big, beefy man whose dinner he ruined earlier.

Episode 6 - Things Aren't Simple Anymore - Margaret struggles to come to terms with life after Victor. In flashbacks she recalls the final months of his life. First aseries of disasters and embarrassments - being overtaken out jogging by an over-80s fitness class, the living room turned into a shrine, spearing a passing mooner with a hypodermic... Then, six months ago, after attending a reunion party at which he was the only person who turned up,Victor was mown down by a hit-and-run driver. Margaret is still shaken and furious at his unknown assailant, but she is made of stern stuff and has also found a new soul-mate, recently widowed Glynis Holloway (Hannah Gordon). When her new friend remarks on how well she is managing, Margaret asserts that she has "a way" of coping with her bereavement.The spirit, if not the physical presence, of her late husband is there to guide her in taking on the world and all its problems with a renewed steely determination. But she receives another nasty shock when she discovers the identity of Victor's killer...

Written by David Renwick
Directed by Christine Gernon
Produced by Jonathan P Llewellyn
Theme Music by Eric Idle

"...glorious... All I can say is that if the BBC comes up with one new sitcom with characters that are half as true to life as the Meldrews, it can count itself very lucky indeed. Or one with lines that are anything like as fresh-minted - jokes that are as original, and plots that are as brilliantly crafted. No comedy writer is more brilliant than David Renwick at weaving together plot strands that in themselves are unremarkable at the time, and perfectly believable, but result in climactic moments of such hilarious surreality. The best jokes are the ones that catch you by surprise. With lesser writers you can see them coming a mile off: Renwick leads you down the garden path and, just when you think you know where are, you discover you're somewhere completely different." Daily Mail

"...the writing is sublime..." Guardian

"Meldrew... is going out on a high. One Foot in the Grave is often seen as yet another middle-class suburban sitcom, but it has always been a lot cleverer than that. Renwick is a master of farce, who can combine dozens of ridiculous situations in a single episode, so seemlessly that you hardly notice it is happening... The last series has been as sharp and clever as any, spiked with unexpected moments of genuine tragedy, as if the writer David Renwick was preparing us for death." The Times

"Why so funny? Why so bleak? Why so good? Renwick's strength here is in details of everyday normality turned on its head, interwoven with a series of mishaps which couldn't possibly befall one person - but just might. It's the unbearable truth of the material which drives it home... Indulge in the utter darkness of it, and enjoy." The Times

"This series is the last bottle in the cellar, something to be savoured." Guardian

"The point about Victor Meldrew was not that he was bad-tempered. If Victor was irascible, it was usually because he had a right to be.Victor's true significance was that he was a rare warrior in the battle against growing incivility and modern egocentrism. And when people say (as many do) that they have some Victor Meldrew in them, I take them to mean that they too feel like shouting out loud against a world gone mad." Independent