Last night on iPlayer: One Foot in the Grave

In our series celebrating individual episodes of British television, IVAN KIRBY salutes Victor and Margaret Meldrew.

Age brings a creeping realisation to those who were young in the 1990s: Victor Meldrew was right. The sexagenarian protagonist of David Renwick’s BBC sitcom One Foot in the Grave, played by Richard Wilson, may have originally seemed to us just a grumpy old man, but as we close in upon his age, and increasingly find daily life a series of frustrations, he stands revealed as a tireless crusader against injustice and incivility — ‘Victor Meldrew, the crimson Avenger’ as he announces in one episode, referring to his car while also casting himself as a superhero.

But was Victor right? He’s certainly righteous (at least in his own mind). And we can uncomplicatedly cheer some of his bolder stands, such as single-handedly bringing down the cruel establishment at a retirement home in the episode ‘Hearts of Darkness’ (alhough we may be disinclined to ponder on what exactly becomes of its liberated residents).

Many of his gripes, however, are just petty; and frequently he gets the wrong end of the stick entirely. Even when the retribution he dishes out like Mildly Soiled Harry is justified, it often rebounds on him spectacularly, with the inescapable conclusion that he should have just left well alone.

It’s true that what Victor’s up against is considerably more bizarre than the minor harassments most of us have to deal with. In ‘Warm Champagne’ (1993), the fourth episode of the programme’s fourth series, these include: severely sunburnt feet that necessitate him walking around on his knees; rude neighbourhood children who smash his front window with a cricket ball (which he nearly bites into after mistaking it for an apple); their father then erecting an elaborate pub sign bearing Victor’s likeness (‘the Pain in the Arse’) in his front garden; a sadistic neighbour who makes him search through bags of dog faeces for the key to his shed (which is really in a drawer all along); a lamppost smashed through his bedroom window by a passing dairy truck; and an unknown elderly lady mistakenly deposited in his bed by the hospital transport service. In the face of such surreal calamities the desire to take up cudgels against the world is certainly forgivable.

In contrast to Victor is the pragmatic approach of his wife Margaret (Annette Crosbie), on the surface a far more equable and tolerant character, who puts up with Victor despite her constant exasperation at his antics. Interviewers would ask the actors why she didn’t simply leave him. To which Wilson would respond: ‘Why doesn’t he leave her?’ — reflecting the fact that Margaret is a significantly more complex character than the long-suffering June Whitfield-esque sitcom wife she might initially appear. She can be jealous, selfish and ruthless, and the show’s finale sees her mete out an act of vengeance far beyond anything Victor would ever have contemplated.

The second-series episode ‘Timeless Time’ was the first to give us a real insight into the couple’s relationship, revealing (with beautiful subtlety) their shared bond of grief over a son who died in babyhood. But it’s in ‘Warm Champagne’ that we truly learn what keeps the Meldrews together.

The episode begins with their return from a break at the seaside, Victor suffering with the aforementioned burnt feet and immediately entering into a slanging match with the neighbourhood children. Margaret’s attention, however, is elsewhere: while away, she and Victor met a charming single gent named Ben (Tristram Jellinek [1]) with whom she struck up a rapport, and he has asked her to stay in touch. As Victor contends with the various tribulations listed above, Margaret arranges to meet Ben for dinner — and does not inform her husband.

Their date goes swimmingly, and she goes back to his for coffee, where he marvels at how long she’s been able to put up with Victor — ‘Thirty-five years saddled to that!’ — and tempts her to leave him: ‘It’s never too late Margaret, even at our time of life, to change direction.’ She cuts off his flow with a passionate kiss — but it’s a kiss goodbye. And when she tells Ben why she won’t leave her husband for him we learn the truth about Victor, and about the Meldrews’ marriage: ‘He’s the most sensitive person I’ve ever met, and that’s why I love him, and why I constantly want to ram his head through a television screen’.

Suddenly, we understand Victor not as a grumpy old man but as a vulnerable child who never grew the hard outer shell that protects Margaret and most other adults from life’s disappointments; we realise that she sees it as her role to shield him (at least from everyone other than her). It’s an astonishingly poignant moment that throws the whole series into focus.

The sitcom has to preserve its central relationship, so the pronouncement of Ben’s that gives the episode its title — ‘There’s nothing worse than warm champagne’ — along with his unpleasant jibes about Victor, clue us in that he is ultimately shallow and unworthy of Margaret’s love. Nobody will feel any disappointment when she returns home.

Except perhaps Margaret herself, who comes back to find a much older woman in bed with her husband. (‘I thought it was you!’ ‘Oh, thank you very much!’)

I’ve been a Victor (a reminder here that the character’s name is meant ironically), too sensitive to any hurt to meet the world on its own terms, and with a child’s resentment that it wouldn’t meet me on mine. And I’ve had a Margaret, exhausted but ultimately enabling. In our case, the change of direction happened; I felt the cruel rejection that Margaret is unable to put Victor through. But Margaret can’t leave because she loves, and I’ve had to learn (if you’ll forgive me coming over all Carrie Bradshaw) that sometimes leaving is the most loving thing that you can do.

‘Warm Champagne’ is available on BBC iPlayer

[1] Perhaps inspired by the actor, ‘Jellinek’ had been used as an amusingly unlikely surname in an early episode of One Foot in the Grave.

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