A Comedy On This Day: One Foot In The Grave - Rearranging The Dust (15 January 1995)

 The five single-location, self-contained, OFITG episodes (Victor and Margaret in bed, the traffic jam, Victor home alone, waiting in the solicitor's office - this one - and the power cut) are amongst the very highest order of sitcom creation, I think. They're the type of thing that should probably be only attempted once programme-makers know that they're on to something special in a series - when the audience has something invested in the characters, and the writer knows what the lead actors are capable of.

  This episode is far from low-key or downbeat. In fact, it’s packed with incident. Just small discomforts and humiliations, that help the viewer to accept the more off-centre oddities that eventually occur - the complications arising from Victor starting an argument with the dog owner outside, or the peculiar habits of Mr Protheroe.

 

 A few reflections -

 

 No opening credits this week.

 

 It’s a wholly naturalist, seemingly unexceptional set - until you notice that a print of Munch's 'The Scream' is on the wall. There's also a peculiar high window that isn't drawn attention to... but you keep it subconsciously in mind when Victor starts to tap the hollow wall under it... and you only register how the rooms must be connected later on, in another humiliation for Victor.

 I've always thought that (early in the episode) Victor dusting the barometer, it crashing to the floor and breaking, and Margaret telling him to leave it, was a brilliant moment. Not only for the gag, but also for the shock value - it really wasn't his fault, he was trying to help - and how it isn't referred to again (and we never see it). But most of us would feel terribly anxious if we broke something valuable in a waiting room when no one else was there, and it sets up an awkward mood.

 I vividly remember watching this one at the time - on my own on a little black and white portable in my Halls of Residence room, on a Sunday evening at the end of a doubtless eventless January campus weekend. Also thinking about my parents, because I'd watched the first three episodes of this series together with them back at home during the Christmas holidays, and I knew that they would particularly enjoy this one.

 An almost unique TV comedy appearance for Antony Sher as Mr Protheroe.

 The two almost identically dressed women, who enter and leave the waiting room together, are a great creation, registering as something curious and unexplained, without being outlandish.

 Margaret doesn't seem to have much to do in this episode while Victor fiddles about and complains, but you do register what she's feeling and how she's responding at any given moment. Sometimes she barely reacts and stays concentrated on her magazine, sometimes looks up but elects not to speak, making the moments when she does snap in exasperation more convincing. It’s in the writing (and Annette Crosbie is a great actress) but it’s also the product of proper rehearsal.

 Maragret's complaint "Its worse than taking a toddler out. I should have you in reins!" puts a mother-child relationship in the viewer's mind, which we then see when she starts to clean Victor up, or tells him to behave himself.

 And then the ending - when we learn how the couple first met, 37 years ago - belongs to Margaret, and you understand why she's starting to speak about it at this moment. Partly because she's annoyed with him and to shut him up, partly because they're trapped together in a disconcerting environment for a long and indeterminate stretch of time - but also, as her story goes on, to be kind to him. These moments, when we learn something of the Meldrews' past are rare, and always fascinating.