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[[File:ofitg_6337.jpg|frame|Victor and Margaret... and a [[It Makes Sense in Context|gnome]].]]
{{quote|"I don't believe it!"|'''Victor Meldrew''', [[Catch Phrase]]}}
'''''One Foot in the Grave''''' was a British TV comedy show that followed the misadventures of cranky [[Reluctant Retiree]] [[Knight in Sour Armour|Victor]] [[The Snark Knight|Meldrew]]. The story begins with Victor being forced into early retirement, because his job, where he greets people and signs them in at an office building, is replaced by a small electronic box.
Suddenly and unexpectedly finding himself "retired", he looks for other means to keep himself occupied. More often than not this means he lands himself in [[Hilarity Ensues|unbelievable and frustrating circumstances]]. It seems no facet of his life can leave him without complaints.
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Despite the situation, it subverts the [[Dom Com]] genre. It is a significant [[Black Comedy]], and there are dark moments where it's not meant to be funny, sometimes [[Tear Jerker]] material.
Written by David Renwick, whose other major work is ''[[
* Victor Meldrew, the star.
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* Mr Swainey, their other neighbor. He's a bit peculiar and nice-to-the-point-of-annoying.
Came tenth in ''[[Britain's
{{tropelist}}
* [[Artifact of Death]]
* [[Ascended Extra]]
* [[Ashes to Crashes]]
* [[Aw, Look -- They Really Do Love Each Other]]:
{{quote|
* [[Audio Adaptation]]
* [[Black Comedy]]
* [[Bottle Episode]]
** "Timeless Time" (series 2), set entirely in Victor and Margaret's bedroom during a sleepless night▼
** "
** "The
** "
** "
▲** "
* [[Brick Joke]]
* [[Britain Is Only London]]
* [[Catch Phrase]]
** Richard Wilson, the actor who played Victor, has long been [[Your Secrets Safe With Me Superman|hounded to repeat this phrase]]. When he made a guest appearance on ''[[Father Ted]]'', he only agreed to say the line on the condition that he got to beat the title character up (which he did, twice) after Ted shouted it at him. Supposedly he now repeats the line only at charity events.
*** Also, to a lesser extent, "What in the name of ''bloody hell?''"
*** And "Oh, God!" with God drawled out, and pronounced more like ''gawwwd''.
*** "What in the name of ''insanity''" is another one that seems to crop up often too, espectially when something particularly mental happens, such as someone taking his word too literally and planting a small palm tree bonsai in his downstairs toilet.
* [[Chekhov's Gun]]
** Actually, this series is a succession of [[Chekhov's Gunman|Checkhov's Gunmen]] passing through [[Chekhov's Armoury]]. Quite often, even the most inconsequential details or objects, or scenes that just seem like throwaway gags, will return with a vengeance later in the episode. Victor catches fleas from the neighbour's cat? It's used at the end. Victor complains about the junk in his garden? Used at the end. Victor talks about someone losing their wig? Used at the end. HARD.
* [[Chew Toy]]
* [[Christmas Episode]]
* [[Clean Pretty Reliable]]
* [[Cloudcuckoolander]]
** Margaret sometimes lapses into this despite usually being the [[Straight Man]] (er, woman). Every now and then she will make some wild claim that makes very little sense, sometimes seeming a bit out of character. For example, when talking about friends who have died to her husband Victor, she mentions someone who apparently died of a terminal disease:
{{quote|
'''Margaret''': Well she died, didn't she?
'''Victor''': ... She fell off a cliff!
'''Margaret''': Only because she went to the seaside to convalesce!
* [[Contrast Montage]]
* [[Cordon Bleugh Chef]]
* [[Crapsack World]]
* [[Creator Cameo]]
* [[Crying Wolf]]
* [[Dead All Along]]
**
* [[Deadpan Snarker]]
* [[Dead Pet Sketch]]
** When one of Victor's magician friends suffers a heart attack, Margaret and Mrs. Warboys try to bring him around ({{spoiler|unaware that they're trying to revive the wrong man}}) and Mrs. Warboys feels a fluttering sensation in his chest. She tries to massage his heart... and then opens his shirt to reveal one of the magician's doves, who has been crushed to death by her attempt at CPR.
* [[Disproportionate Retribution]]
▲* [[Deadpan Snarker]] -- Patrick quickly turns into one of these once the feud between him and Victor starts. Given that his twin brother, who never meets Victor, is shown to be exactly the same during in his sole appearance in the show, odds are this is something that runs in the Trench family, although Victor certainly brings out the worst in Patrick.
* [[Downer Ending]]
▲* [[Disproportionate Retribution]] -- Victor usually goes a step or two beyond what most people would do when someone wrongs him. However, this absolutely pales in comparison to what other people do to Victor. One instance had him insulting the children of a sign-maker after they damaged one of his windows by playing cricket on his front lawn. Their father's response? {{spoiler|Paint the image of Victor's face into a pub sign with "The Pain in the Arse" written where the pub's name would normally go, then erect the sign on a flagpole outside the Meldrews' house in the early hours of the morning}}.
** The end of the final episode
▲* [[Downer Ending]] -- Pretty much every recurring character in the series ends up in a worse situation than at the start of the show.
▲** The end of the final episode; Margaret has lost her husband, apparently lost contact with every single one of her friends from earlier in the series (''where'' is the inseparable Mrs Warboys?) and the one friend she ''does'' have turns out to be Victor's murderer. Depending on your opinion when it comes to revenge, the fact that it's implied Margaret may have murdered the woman in cold blood can also be a pretty accurate example of this trope.
* [[Expository Theme Tune]]
▲* [[Escalating War]] -- Between Victor and Patrick.
* [[Flatline]]
▲* [[Expository Theme Tune]] -- The opening and closing themes sung by [[Monty Python|Eric Idle]] describe Victor quite well. ("It's true that my body has seen better days / But give me half a chance and I can still misbehave")
▲* [[Flatline]] -- Subverted. Margaret is hooked up to life support as Victor stays with her, holding her hand. The heart monitor does the standard "beep.. beep.. beep.. beep.. beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep", and prompts a [[Really Dead Montage]] from Victor, and then a nurse wanders by, complains that the heart monitor had been faulty all week, [[Percussive Maintenance|bashes it]], and apologises, as it starts beeping regularly again.
** Note that at one stage, the episode in question was meant to be the series finale, and Margaret would have been [[Killed Off for Real]], subverting the audience's expectation that Victor's misadventures would eventually take a fatal toll on his health. David Renwick thought this ending would be too unjust, though, and the BBC also changed their mind about ending the series at that point. However, Renwick decided to keep her "death" scene to fake out the audience.
* [[The Ghost]]
* [[Grumpy Old Man]]
* [[Headphones Equal Isolation]]
* [[Humans Are
* [[I Like My X Like I Like My Y]]
* [[Intoxication Ensues]]
* [[Karma Houdini]]
▲* [[Humans Are Bastards]] -- A recurring theme [[Played for Drama|played for drama]] [[Played for Laughs|and laughs]]; see also [[Crapsack World]].
▲* [[I Like My X Like I Like My Y]] -- "I like my toast like I like my women. Golden brown, and covered in marmalade."
▲* [[Intoxication Ensues]] -- After Victor takes up a job as a gardener for Patrick's boss, Margaret notices him becoming increasingly chirpier. {{spoiler|It turns out he's been inadvertently inhaling large amounts of cocaine after a drug dealer hid his stash in the fertiliser, and to top it all off it [[That Poor Plant|kills all the plants too]].}}
▲* [[Karma Houdini]] -- Patrick appears to achieve this status in one episode, where his pet dachshund swallows Victor's spare door key, and Patrick responds by getting Victor to sift through dog poop to find it. It turns out that {{spoiler|the dog never actually swallowed the key in the first place, which Patrick full well knew}}. Patrick seems to get away with this, since Margaret still believes the situation is Victor's own fault... until {{spoiler|Pippa unknowingly gives Victor a copy of Patrick's diary, in which he gloats about what he's been doing}}.
** Several one-time characters or offscreen antagonists of Victor often get away with victimizing him or getting the last laugh, even if they were just as provocative as him. This can become even harsher in effect keeping in mind regardless of his eccentricities, they are still abusing an elderly citizen.
* [[Locked in
* [[Meaningful Echo]]: The inept message on Margaret's mother's answering machine
* [[Mistaken for Cheating]]
** Mrs. Warboys also does this with her husband, even going so far as to hire a private detective to tail him.
** Victor also thinks that Pippa is cheating on Patrick, after he catches her in the house of a rich, handsome man. {{spoiler|It subsequently turns out that he's actually her brother, and Patrick is there as well}}.
** Victor and Margaret manage the rare feat of mistaking ''themselves'' for cheats in one episode where they're on holiday at a seaside guest house. They subsequently end up getting revenge on their supposed partners for "taking advantage" of
* [[Mistaken for Gay]]: Victor mistakes Patrick for his gay brother (despite the fact they look nothing alike) due to Patrick carrying a [[Camp Gay|pink umbrella and walking delicately down the road]]. Naturally, Victor then gives Patrick a video full of hardcore gay pornography.
* [[Mood Whiplash]]
** In another scene Mr Swainey, who has dedicated much of his life to looking after old people and was permanently blithely enthusiastic about it, reflects darkly to Margaret about how he's basically not had a life of his own and never will because of it. Then in the background, [[Funny Background Event|Victor's head is smashed through an upstairs window and dangled out of it by a man beating him up for pouring maggots over his lunch previously]].
* [[No Indoor Voice]]
* [[Non-Identical Twins]]
* [[Noodle Incident]]
** Victor has a recurring nightmare that falls under this trope, mostly because whenever Margaret confronts him about it, he claims not to know what she's talking about. All we know is that he has the nightmare roughly once per series, and it somehow involves pastry.
* [[Not So Different]]
** Also, after being forced to stay together in an abandoned house for a while (and after a few glasses of whiskey) Victor and Patrick seem to put their differences aside and actually get along quite well.
** Margaret despite often acting as the [[Closer to Earth|more sensible and sociable of the couple]] can often prove to be just as bad tempered and oddball as Victor (and is far more likely to [[
* [[One Scene, Two Monologues]]
* [[Only Sane Man]]
* [[Pet the Dog]]
* [[Real Life Writes the Plot]]
* [["The Reason You Suck" Speech]]
{{quote|
'''Ben''': ...no?
'''Margaret''': No... I really don't think you do.
* [[Reluctant Retiree]]
* [[Scary Scarecrows]]
* [[Show Within a Show]]
* [[Sickly Green Glow]]
* [[Silly Walk]]
* [[Sliding Scale of Silliness Versus Seriousness]]: Zips from one extreme of the scale to another with remarkable agility; see [[Mood Whiplash]].
* [[The Snark Knight]]
* [[Spell My Name
** A ''literal'' example of this trope happens in "Warm Champagne"
* [[Take Our Word for It]]
* [[Take That]]
* [[Take That, Critics!]]
* [[Tomato Surprise]]
▲* [[Title Theme Tune]] -- "Clapped out, run down, too old to save / One foot in the grave."
▲* [[Tomato Surprise]] -- In a special movie-length episode, a photographer ends up chasing Victor and co. all the way to Portugal in search of a very valuable roll of film that fell into Margaret's handbag, suffering no small amount of injuries and mishaps in his attempts to get it back without them noticing. It later turns out that {{spoiler|he'd never lost the film in the first place; it had just slipped into the lining of his own jacket. Of course, given that he only realises this after losing said jacket in an earlier scene...}}
* [[True Art Is Incomprehensible]]
▲* [[Trans Atlantic Equivalent]] -- ''[[Cosby]]'' (US)
* [[Unsympathetic Comedy Protagonist]]
▲* [[True Art Is Incomprehensible]] -- In an in-universe example, Victor gets a hold of what he thinks is an abstract painting that was discarded by its artist. In actuality, it's just a piece of plywood covered in bird droppings. As the show continues, both he and Margaret gradually begin to appreciate the "composition". Patrick, however, immediately recognises it for what it is and points it out, much to Victor's chagrin.
▲* [[Unsympathetic Comedy Protagonist]] -- Victor. Though he does fall in the "at least pitiable" category sometimes; after all, he does end up in the oddest predicaments which does go some way explain his eternal grumpiness.
** To be perfectly fair, Victor actually comes across as a fairly pleasant, cheerful guy during the rare and short-lived moments when he ''isn't'' being screwed over by the universe and everyone around him.
** Also because the other characters usually only see Victor doing something utterly eccentric, while the viewers see the build-up, and know that there's a perfectly logical explanation as to why he should drive up to Patrick, introduce himself as if they've never met before, then give him a videotape of hard-core gay pornography.
* [[The Voice]]
* [[Weirdness Magnet]]
** It is interesting to note how most of the more unusual residents around Victor seem to get along with him a lot more (or are at least [[Vitriolic Best Buds|oblivious to his occasion detesting of them]]). Granted, they still occasionally manage to cause trouble for him [[Stop Helping Me!|completely by accident]], but it is amusing how they are of the few that actually sympathise with him (in comparison to the supposedly more normal people around him that often gain a borderline obsessive hatred for his disgruntled behaviour).
* [[World Gone Mad]]
{{reflist}}
{{BAFTA TV Award for Best Comedy (Programme or Series)}}
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[[Category:Comedy Series]]
[[Category:British Series]]
[[Category:Britcom]]
[[Category:Dom Com]]
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