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- This is a list of episodes of the British sitcom One Foot in the Grave, written by David Renwick. The show ran for six series of six episodes each. There were also nine specials including two shorts for Comic Relief, first screened from 4 January 1990 to 20 November 2000 on BBC One and subsequently repeated both on the BBC and thereafter on satellite channels such as Gold. While the programme has always been shown after the 9pm watershed on the BBC, other channels have sometimes broadcast it in earlier slots, with minor edits. The series features the exploits of Victor Meldrew, played by Richard Wilson and his wife, Margaret Meldrew, played by Annette Crosbie, in their battle against the trials of modern life. Most episodes were 30 minutes long, though some were several minutes longer. Christmas editions and other specials were generally longer. Richard Wilson appears in all 42 episodes whilst Annette Crosbie appears in all except for the 1993 episode "The Trial". The character Jean Warboys, played by Doreen Mantle, appeared in 18 episodes, with Nick Swainey, played by Owen Brenman appearing in 15 episodes and Patrick and Pippa Trench played by Angus Deayton and Janine Duvitski in 14. Ronnie (Gordon Peters) appears in three episodes. There were also two short specials (under ten minutes in length) for Comic Relief, one of which featured Richard Wilson (Victor Meldrew) alone, though it included at one point the voice of Paul Merton. The Comic Relief special in 2001 was set after Victor's death. Though Richard Wilson appeared, Margaret did not interact with Victor's ghost, being unaware of his presence, although she briefly complains about "cold air" beside her. (en)
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- The Meldrews and Mrs Warboys embark upon a hellish holiday to Portugal. After an entanglement with the police, they finally arrive at their unpleasant villa. Mrs Warboys finds love with her Portuguese penpal Alfonso , donkeys follow Victor around, a paparazzo pursues the group trying to retrieve some lucrative snaps and a boxer tries to find his inner anger...which becomes much easier thanks to Victor's misadventures. (en)
- A young female window cleaner accuses Victor of flashing her when, through his bathroom window, she sees him naked and drying his genitals with a flannel.
Victor's cousin Geoffrey, who had also just taken early retirement at age 60, dies of a heart attack and the Meldrews attend his funeral. Jehovah's Witnesses visit the Meldrews.
The Meldrews attend a fitness class, during which the instructor dies.
Victor's been looking after a small bird that regularly perches in his garden; he finds it dead on his lawn and buries it. He falls asleep while sitting in his garden. He awakens to thick fog and thinks he has died in his sleep. He accidentally steps on a rake in his garden and wakes up in a hospital bed thinking he is dead and his roommate is God. (en)
- In a coffee shop, Mrs Warboys tells the story of how Margaret went missing following a series of haunting dreams in which she murders someone who looks exactly like Victor.
Mr Swainey evades Victor's attempts to nail the fence closed and invites the Meldrews to see his pigeons. (en)
- Margaret is visiting a relative in hospital. Victor is his usual self, complaining about everything; and Margaret is her usual self, pretending not to hear him...or is she? Eric Sykes plays Uncle Dick, who has only one line in the sketch.
NOTE: Final appearances of Victor and Margaret Meldrew. Victor appears to be alive but Margaret does not acknowledge him, implying that he is a ghost after she complains about a cold air in the room. (en)
- Mr Swainey returns from holiday in Africa and gives the Meldrews a cursed scorpion paperweight. Victor receives a phone call from the burglars who burgled his house asking for help programming the video recorder. Meanwhile, Patrick and Pippa's attempts to sell their house are hampered when the prospective buyers encounter Victor. (en)
- Victor has a new job as a window cleaner. Patrick's plans for a quiet birthday are ruined after an unfortunate misunderstanding involving a modern art painting. A visit to a Chinese restaurant called Shaghai Express results in Pippa having a fling. Victor unwittingly discovers the restaurant's underground brothel. (en)
- A visit from Patrick's gay twin brother Nigel leaves Pippa mentally and physically exhausted, especially when Patrick sits on a cork. Victor takes up fishing. (en)
- Before the Meldrews can leave for their holiday in Athens, they must cope with Victor's fear of flying and Mrs Warboys' food poisoning.
A very tall man reads their electricity meter; when he takes his shoes off they are accidentally taken to Oxfam, so Victor gives him a pair of his uncle's very large shoes.
Victor wrongly assumes that a man who is sitting in a wheelchair is unable to walk and wheels him around and carries him up flights of stairs, until he stands up and tells Victor that it is his wife's wheelchair.
An Indian python escapes from a garden center and Victor unwittingly carries it into his house. It enters his suitcase and Victor takes it to the airport. (en)
- Victor writes a script for a new sitcom, but nobody else finds it funny. Margaret also catches dramatic fever; she joins an amateur dramatics society and gets invited to local thespian Desiree Gibson 's Bergerac party.
Victor argues with a litterbug and gets back at him by tipping rubbish into his car... only to discover it is another man's car. (en)
- Victor decides that Patrick's cherry tree is the cause of his garden being dry and enlists a Neanderthal gardener to cut off the roots that are under Victor's garden. After Victor argues with the gardener, the gardener retaliates by burying Victor up to his neck in the hole. Meanwhile, Patrick adopts a dachshund puppy, and Margaret is stunned by tragic news. (en)
- A bank holiday day out turns into a nightmare when the Meldrews and Mrs. Warboys are stuck in a traffic jam staring at a horse's backside for over four hours. Attempting to lighten the mood with music, Victor find a song about him sung by his car mechanics.
This summer-set episode was filmed in winter near Luton — when, ironically, real cars were driving past the Meldrews during filming. This episode is set in real time in the Meldrews' car. (en)
- Mr Swainey is attracted to his mother's nurse. Margaret encourages him to ask Tania out, but after he makes plans for a date, Margaret tells him that she saw Tania with another man.
Victor takes a job as a chauffeur for businessman Lewis Atterbury . Two of Atterbury's expensive cars are accidentally destroyed. (en)
- After a power cut on the hottest day of the year, the Meldrews are visited by the incontinent Mr Smedley . (en)
- The Meldrews return from their holiday to find that their baggage has been sent to the other side of the world. Their house has also been demolished after it was badly damaged by fire. Six months later they move into a new house and hold a housewarming party. (en)
- Mrs Warboys and her cockatiel stay with the Meldrews because her flat is severely flooded.
Victor receives what he believes to be reflexology from a young woman, Vicky, after an acquaintance of his recommends her to him. He is shocked when Margaret shows Victor a newspaper interview which reveals Vicky to be a prostitute who rubbed the soles of his feet with her breasts.
A media crew set up outside the Meldrews' house after mistaking Victor for a newspaper editor who printed details about a gay MP's private life. (en)
- Victor muses about life while in the bath. This scene was originally filmed as part of the episode "The Trial" but was cut as it would have caused the episode to overrun its 30-minute slot, so was instead shown as part of the Comic Relief special. Margaret does not appear but her voice is heard on an answering machine message. (en)
- Margaret is pleased when Victor takes up painting — until she discovers that he has been painting a nude model named Doreen and driving her home afterwards. Margaret suspects that Victor is having an affair.
Harold Wharton , a friend of Margaret's wrongly believes that she wants to have sex with him and gets into bed ready for her in the Meldrews' house. (en)
- The Meldrews make an effort to get on with their pleasant new neighbours Derek and Betty McVitie and the two couples go on holiday together. Victor buys a haunted caravan and accidentally kidnaps the mother of an Indian millionaire. (en)
- Victor and Margaret are unable to sleep. During the night Victor has to deal with car alarms, almost opens last year's Christmas present from Ronnie and Mildred and gets his foot caught in a decomposing hedgehog.
This episode is set entirely in the Meldrews' bedroom and features the only mention of their late son, Stuart. (en)
- Victor's feud with Patrick continues via the use of Post-it Notes. Victor discovers that the horse manure he bought for his allotment is radioactive, and Pippa announces she is pregnant.
Guest appearance by Eric Idle. (en)
- Margaret and Pippa arrange for Victor and Patrick to go to an Armenian restaurant in a failed attempt to end their feud. The staff wrongly assume that the two men are lovers.
When clearing out their loft in preparation for conversion, Victor discovers and restores a Dutch marionette, which makes Margaret jealous, so she microwaves it.
Victor suspects Pippa is having an affair, until he discovers that the man is her brother.
Margaret is upset at being made redundant due to the shop's closure.
The Meldrew's loft is converted by identical twin builders , one of whom plays pranks on Margaret in which he pretends to be injured. (en)
- Victor is mugged whilst taking a photograph. He tries to scrub insulting graffiti off the outside of his house. He finds a dead stray cat in the freezer and dumps it in a skip.
Mrs Birkett visits to collect items for an upcoming jumble sale; Margaret invites her to take things from the loft which she had put aside for the sale. Victor closes the loft hatch, unaware that Mrs Birkett is in there. He calls a plumber because of frequent banging which Victor thinks is coming from the radiators. The plumber says that the thermostat is faulty and that he will return in three days to fix it.
Victor heads a Neighbourhood Watch meeting at his house, where he shows the attendees a starting pistol which he carries to scare off attackers. He goes to a street market where he takes a jacket which he says is his. He meets Mrs Warboys, who shows him a grenade which her dog dug out of her garden. She removes the pin, so Victor throws it onto a bowling green, then lays on the floor. Two youths think he is having a heart attack and try to 'revive' him; Victor thinks they are attacking him so he repels them. Margaret gives him his jacket which the police recovered and returned.
There is a mysterious bad smell around the sideboard. (en)
- The Meldrews are on holiday, staying with old friends Vince and April in their boarding house on the south coast. A series of misunderstandings leave the couple believing the other is being unfaithful.
Victor puts a pint of beer on his forehead whilst lying down, not realising that Margaret has repaired it using superglue. (en)
- The Meldrews have returned from another holiday. Victor already has sunburnt feet and a new lamppost outside the house causes even more problems. Margaret's annoyance at his incessant grumbling makes her consider having an affair with Ben , a holiday acquaintance. She meets him for drinks...and returns home to find a very old woman in her bed, to her surprise as much as Victor's. The old woman had been brought to the Meldrews' by a man who wrongly believed she lives there. (en)
- After fending off a visit from Ronnie and Mildred , the Meldrews attend the filming of a BBC sitcom with a confused window cleaner who they believe is Mrs Warboys' cousin Wilfred .
Victor becomes frustrated when a car containing an old mattress is dumped in the skip outside his house. The following Monday he starts his new job as a hotel doorman, but resigns almost immediately after throwing a snobbish customer's toupee down a drain. (en)
- Victor and Margaret are puzzled when a couple named Patrick and Pippa visit as they have no idea who they are; then Margaret remembers that they are their next-door neighbours who have been on holiday for a month.
Victor is annoyed by a toy dinosaur salesman who comes to the house. Margaret befriends a lonely elderly blind man, Albert . He is later killed by burglars in his flat, and it transpires he spent the money he was to use to buy new locks on toy dinosaurs instead.
A charity concert gives Victor the chance to share his ventriloquist skills, only to realise his act is part of a rock and death metal variety concert. (en)
- The Meldrews return from a shopping trip to discover their house has been burgled and their neighbours gave the burglars refreshments and a jump-start for their van. Victor decides not to replace the television to give them more opportunities to get out of the house. However an evening trip to the pub results in a disconcerting experience with Margaret's colleague Meg , whose husband-to-be turns out to be Victor's school acquaintance Billy . As a result, Margaret orders a new television. (en)
- After a disappointing reunion dinner, Victor is killed in a hit-and-run accident. As Margaret copes with life without him, she receives another shock when she discovers the driver was her new friend Glynis . How she deals with this is left ambiguous.
The song "End of the Line" by the Traveling Wilburys is played over the end credits. (en)
- Victor hires attractive young cleaner Katy to help around the house and inadvertently gets Mrs Warboys tattooed. Meanwhile, a large plastic fly is delivered and something's going on at the local takeaway. (en)
- Patrick and Pippa fear the worst when they ask Victor and Margaret to look after their house while they are on holiday. Victor's absent-minded brother Alfred is visiting from New Zealand. (en)
- Sixty-year-old Victor Meldrew is made to retire from his job as a security guard after 26 years; he is replaced by a box and a recorded message. As he contemplates his future at home, he receives a visit from Nick Swainey from the Outward Bound Scheme for the elderly. Victor has a job interview, but arrives very late.
Victor practises magic tricks for a performance and is asked to rehearse his act during the evening. On his way, he approaches a woman who is standing on the street and asks her to help him fix his car. She is a policewoman posing as a prostitute and he is put on trial for kerb-crawling. He is acquitted, but fined for contempt of court because he threw a Bible at the judge. (en)
- Margaret collapses from nervous exhaustion which has been building up for the past 35 years. After a few days in Victor's care, she decides returning to work would be less stressful. Mrs Warboys visits, bringing Andrea Temple , whom Margaret knew as a child, and her baby, who has a mysterious fondness for garden gnomes. Victor uncovers the disturbing truth about her, but decides not to tell Margaret. (en)
- Mrs Warboys has a wax model of herself made as the prize in a competition. She dislikes it, so she throws it away.
Victor's feud with a locksmith reaches a head when he locks the locksmith in his own porch.
Local greengrocer Millicent takes a fancy to Victor and attempts to lure him to her house when he misses a football match he was due to attend in London. She later tries to convince Margaret that Victor is having sex with her. (en)
- When the Meldrews invite Patrick and Pippa to dinner, Patrick is distinctly worried about what horrors might befall them. Mrs. Warboys believes her husband is having an affair with their neighbour. Meanwhile, Victor has a new job as a lollipop man and hoax calls to the fire brigade slow down his preparations for hosting the next meeting of his magicians' club. (en)
- When Cousin Ursula dies, Victor and Margaret must clear out her country house; before they go, a witch predicts an untimely end for Victor.
Patrick and Pippa prepare to move far away from the Meldrews, then Patrick gets stuck with Victor while trying to escape his secretary's jealous boyfriend . When the boyfriend finally catches up with them, Victor manages to rescue Patrick by charging at the man, knocking both of them out of the window. (en)
- The Meldrews are frustrated when their unreliable stolen car is returned just before their insurance company is due to pay out for a new one. Margaret unwittingly buys Christmas crackers which contain jokes about Victor, and the Meldrews receive a surprise visit from Mr Foskett . (en)
- A man whom the Meldrews find living in their shed turns out to be a drug dealer. Victor takes a gardening job working for Patrick's new boss, Fenella Fortune and dealing with very effective herbicide. Mr Swainey's mother claims that she is being abducted by aliens every night.
Mr. Tambourine Man by The Byrds is used in the closing credits. (en)
- The Meldrews, Mrs Warboys and Mr Swainey take a trip into the countryside, where they end up stranded in a river playing Trivial Pursuit. Victor and Mrs. Warboys later end up with their feet in a concrete block. While searching for help, Victor inadvertently comes to a care home, where he is let in by an old man. After discovering that the old man was punished for letting him in, Victor picks the lock to enter and enacts a terrible revenge on the staff. (en)
- While organising their new house, the Meldrews are entrusted to look after Margaret's goddaughter's tortoise, who walks into a pile of garden rubbish which Victor burns. Margaret douses the tortoise in cold water when she realises that it had been burnt, but it has died. Victor informs their goddaughter's mother of the tortoise's death; unaware of this, Margaret buys a new tortoise for her. The mother thinks the tortoise in the box they receive is the dead one and buries it alive. Meanwhile, the wallpaper is stripped in the Meldrews' new home. (en)
- Victor is angry at the poor job builders have made of his new crazy paving. He also has a health scare - possibly due to his portrayal of an amateur-dramatic vampire, and the Meldrews try to get their new car's obscene number plates changed. (en)
- A mistake on a catalogue order form results in 263 garden gnomes being delivered to the Meldrews' house.
The Meldrews meet Pippa's father, Reverend Croker , a vicar who thinks he has lost his faith and Victor learns more about Mrs Burridge , a video-store worker with whom he had a conflict. (en)
- Victor is trapped in his shed for three hours thanks to a swarm of belligerent bees, stuck in the optician's with his eyes shut, then stuck babysitting two unpleasant children. (en)
- Victor is home alone while on call for jury service. He receives a letter from disgruntled Jehovah's Witnesses, tries to avoid details of Mrs. Warboys' holiday in Cork, tackles a crossword and contemplates his various ailments. (en)
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