One Foot in the Grave/Awesome

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • The main character, Victor Meldrew, stumbles upon a senior care center for mentally ill seniors, where the staff brutally abuse the residents, and lock two of them under the stairs. His response? While the staff relax, he breaks in, frees the people from under the stairs, distracts the staff and drugs their booze with Valium. He then confronts the owner of the establishment, informs her that he is going to call the police. When she threatens him, one of the abused residents jabs her with a needle filled with I.V. Valium. While they're knocked out, he and a friend of his plants the staff's feet in concrete, moves them out into a nearby field, and are made up like scarecrows. Then he calls the police. The staff aren't discovered, but the inmates are rescued. All of this is coming from one of the most incompetent men in England (who has spent the first twenty minutes of the episode as his usual magnet for disaster, self-inflicted or otherwise).
    • The manner he calls out the owner is exceptionally awesome. He first enters the building politely asking to retrieve his watch (which he left behind during an earlier misadventure; when he first realised he had left it behind, he witnessed the abuse firsthand through the letterbox and then hatched the above plan), then just as he is about to leave, he passively stops, chuckling as he realises he almost forgot. Forgot what? He forgot to tell her what an evil bastard he thinks she is.

Victor: I- I'm sorry, what language are you talking? It appears to be bollocks!