List of One Foot in the Grave episodes

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 after throwing a Bible at the judge.

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 has 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.

Victor is mugged whilst taking a photograph, tries to scrub insulting graffiti off the outside of his house and finds a dead stray cat in the freezer and dumps it in a skip.

Mrs Birkett (Gabrielle Blunt) 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.

Victor is trapped in his shed for three hours thanks to a swarm of belligerent bees, stuck in the opticians with his eyes shut, then stuck babysitting two unpleasant children.

Margaret is pleased when Victor takes up painting — until she discovers that he has been painting a nude model named Doreen (Gillian Barge) and driving her home afterwards. Rather unfairly, Margaret insists that Victor is having an affair despite what he says.

Harold Wharton (John Barrard), 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.

Before the Meldrews can leave for their holiday in Athens, they must cope with Victor's fear of flying and Mrs Warboys's food poisoning.

A very tall man (Clive Mantle) reads their electricity meter; when he removes his shoes 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 centre, and Victor unwittingly carries it into his house. It enters his suitcase and Victor takes it to the airport.

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.

While organising their new house, the Meldrews are entrusted to look after Margaret's goddaughter's tortoise, who accidentally walks into a pile of garden rubbish which Victor burns. Margaret douses the tortoise in cold water when she realises that it has 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.

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 (Fleur Chandler)'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.

Victor and Margaret are puzzled when a couple named Patrick and Pippa visit as they have no idea who they are; Margaret then 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 (Jimmy Jewel). 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.

The Meldrews are on holiday, staying with old friends Vince (Stephen Lewis) and April (Georgina Hale) 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.

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.

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 (Geoffrey Chater), a vicar who thinks he has lost his faith, and Victor learns more about Mrs Burridge (Cathy Shipton), a video-store worker with whom he had a conflict.

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.

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 (Diana Coupland), whose fiancé turns out to be Victor's school acquaintance Billy (Richard Davies). As a result, Margaret orders a new television.

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.

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 (Richard Pearson) is visiting from New Zealand.

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 discovers his car mechanics have recorded a song about him (to the tune of Cwm Rhondda).

This summer-set episode was filmed in winter near Luton — when, ironically, real cars were driving past the Meldrews during filming.^[2] This episode is set in real time in the Meldrews' car.

Mr Swainey returns from holiday in north 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.

After fending off a visit from Ronnie (Gordon Peters) and Mildred (Jean Challis), the Meldrews attend the filming of a BBC sitcom with a confused window cleaner who they believe is Mrs Warboys' cousin Wilfred (John Rutland).

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.

Victor decides that Patrick's cherry tree is the cause of his garden being dry and enlists a Neanderthal gardener (Daniel Peacock) 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.

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 (Helen Lederer), 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.

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 cement 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.

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 (Tristram Jellinek), 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.

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.

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.

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 pen pal Alfonso (Edward de Souza), donkeys follow Victor around, a paparazzo (Peter Cook) pursues the group trying to retrieve some lucrative snaps and a boxer (Eamonn Walker) tries to find his inner anger...which becomes much easier thanks to Victor's misadventures.

• In 2023, the original film negatives were scanned in High Definition 1080i and the restored feature-length special was broadcast for the first time in HD on BBC Four on Christmas Eve 2023. However, the VHS and DVD release still uses the original format.^[3]

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 (Brian Murphy).

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.

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 (Barbara Windsor) 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.

In the waiting room of their solicitor's office, where Victor is to draw up his will, he and Margaret muse about their life, and Victor assaults a dog owner with a cake. Margaret reminds Victor that it was 37 years ago to the day that they first had sex together. She tells him that it happened at an engagement party and that she thought he was someone else. He tells her that she was his first choice of partner.

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 Meldrews' loft is converted by identical twin builders (Christopher Ryan), one of whom plays pranks on Margaret in which he pretends to be injured.

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 (John Bird). All three of Atterbury's expensive cars are accidentally destroyed.

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 (Phil Daniels). 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.

A man (Ray Winstone) living in the Meldrews' shed turns out to be a drug dealer. Victor takes a gardening job working for Patrick's new boss, Fenella Fortune (Rula Lenska), 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.

The Meldrews make an effort to get on with their pleasant new neighbours Derek (Tim Brooke-Taylor) and Betty McVitie (Marian McLoughlin) and the two couples go on holiday together. Victor buys a haunted caravan and accidentally kidnaps the mother of an Indian millionaire.

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 the Shaghai Express Chinese restaurant results in Pippa having a fling and Victor unwittingly discovering the restaurant's underground brothel.

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.

Victor hires attractive young cleaner Katy (Katy Carmichael) to help around the house and inadvertently gets Mrs Warboys tattooed. Meanwhile, a large plastic fly is delivered and something strange is going on at the local takeaway.

Victor and Margaret struggle to keep cool during a power cut on the hottest night of the year. Victor discovers a teenage couple having sex on the back seat of his car, and the Meldrews are visited by the incontinent Mr Smedley (Roy Hudd).

A visit from Patrick's gay twin brother Nigel (Geoffrey Perkins) leaves Pippa mentally and physically exhausted, especially when Patrick sits on a cork. Victor takes up fishing.

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 (Hannah Gordon). How she deals with this is left ambiguous.

The song "End of the Line" by the Traveling Wilburys is played over the end credits.