The Complete One Foot in the Grave

SERIES 1: Forced into taking early retirement, Victor Meldrew optimistically tries to adjust to years of leisure with his wife Margaret. If only events - coincidences, misunderstandings, bureaucratic inefficiencies and sheer bad luck - didn't conspire against him.

SERIES 2 and 1990 CHRISTMAS SPECIAL: Life continues to throw more slings and arrows at Victor as he and Margaret move to a new house. Next door, the cheerful but terminally boring Nick Swainey seems intent on disturbing Victor's peaceful retirement, while on the other side Patrick and Pippa's lives are made a misery from the moment they first meet the Meldrews.

SERIES 3 and 1991 CHRISTMAS SPECIAL: The third series saw Victor Meldrew and the regular victims of his chaotic retirement settled as an essential part of the nation's viewing. Around 16 million viewers would regularly witness the Meldrew principle in full flow: whatever can go wrong always does and it usually spells disaster for Victor.

SERIES 4 and ONE FOOT IN THE ALGRAVE SPECIAL: Is it a personality defect, bad karma or sheer rotten luck that sets Victor Meldrew apart from the human race? Anything that can go wrong - and quite a few things you wouldn't think possible - invariably befall our hero. Not that he accepts each setback phlegmatically...

SERIES 5 and 1995 CHRISTMAS SPECIAL: It's not as though retirement has given Victor Meldrew more leisure time. He just has more opportunity to complain bitterly, to let inconsequential matters get to him, to drive his wife Margaret around the bend and to look up new illnesses in his medical dictionary...

SERIES 6 THE FINAL SERIES: The grim reaper finally gets to Victor Meldrew. He may not arrive in the form of a strangely-shaped unordered parcel, as a workman with the intellect and of an orang-utan, or even as Meldrew-fixated, ex-neighbour Patrick, but he better be prepared to listen - Victor might have a few complaints to make...

THE 1996 and 1997 CHRISTMAS SPECIALS In these two feature length episodes Victor reaches fantastic new heights of frustration, despair and exasperation - dragging Margaret and anyone else in the vicinity into the maelstrom with him. Featuring many viewers' favourite scenes including the Meldrew 'Surgical Support Recycling Centre' and the indecent exposure identity parade - these are priceless episodes from a magnificent series.