YOU WON’T BELIEVE IT!
Victor Meldrew on life and THAT hit show
IT WAS unforgettable television that left a lump in the throat, a tear in the eye and nearly 13 million viewers glued to their screens as Britain’s most popular grump, Victor Meldrew, was killed off 20 years ago after just 42 episodes and despite the enormous success of One Foot In The Grave.
For the creator of the sitcom, David Renwick, who believed he had squeezed every ounce of life out of his most famous character, it was a brave and principled act in an age when popular series often go on way beyond their sell-by dates.
Killed by a hit-and-run driver, his cap lying in the road, Victor’s demise was moving, heartfelt and utterly final – there would be no sequels or prequels. That night left many viewers heavy-hearted, slumped in their armchairs, mourning the loss of both Victor and Renwick’s deliciously black comedy.
It drew a perfect line under the series and ensured One Foot would be remembered by generations of fans.
Today, 20 years after the TV death of the character he initially didn’t want to play, Richard Wilson, 84, admits he is still frequently hailed by his most famous catchphrase: “I don’t belieeve it!”
He smiles: “It doesn’t worry me that people remember me for Victor because it was a fantastic role. It’s mainly taxi drivers but, whenever anyone shouts out the phrase, I normally smile and wave.
“The only time I would worry is when a group of drunks started shouting – then, I’d move on quickly because you didn’t know where it would end up. Fortunately, that doesn’t happen very often.”
Annette Crosbie, 86, who played Victor’s long-suffering wife Margaret, remains astonished at just how many people still stop her in the street.
“It was wonderful family entertainment, very funny and true to nature,” she says. “The battle between the male and female sex is still going on, with women trying to understand men and men still being too full of themselves – it’s still valid.”
So 30 years after its first episode, why did One Foot become such a hit and result in its leading character, Victor Meldrew, becoming etched so firmly in the national psyche?
THE show’s success can be ascribed to many factors, including writer David Renwick being the harbinger of a new style of sitcom.With One Foot, he never shied away from life’s less savoury subjects, including infidelity, death, violence and vandalism. Renwick allowed his characters to confront life’s uglier elements head on – this was black comedy at its best.
For any sitcom to be successful, viewers must be able to relate to the characters, and Victor, a crabby old curmudgeon in a world he no longer suited, was not an obvious candidate to win anyone’s heart.
Yet closer scrutiny revealed a deeper meaning, a malcontent staunchly supported by his wife, at times driven to the end of her tether yet her devotion never faltering. When One Foot In The Grave began in 1990, Renwick’s anti-hero, riled by the perceived decline in moral standards and plagued by pure bad luck, quickly struck a chord with millions of Britons. The things annoying Victor, it seemed, also annoyed the lion’s share of the population.
“Everybody knew a Victor or was one,” says Annette. “Every man I knew owned up to being a Victor – in some way or another.” Richard, who insists he is nothing like his screen character, agrees.
Yet he initially rejected the role. Renwick wrote the scripts with Wilson in mind after working with him on Whoops Apocalypse and Hot Metal. “Richard is wonderful to write for,” says Renwick, whose other successes include Jonathan Creek. “Fundamentally he is funny. That’s something you can’t define or quantify – he’s just funny saying the lines. “In addition, he has the ability to be very edgy, with great resonance to his delivery. “And, of course, he has all the technical acuity in terms of timing, with all those wonderful slow burns and double takes.”
But however right he was for the part, Richard took some convincing before accepting it. Then aged 53, he initially recoiled against playing a 60-year-old dumped on the unemployment scrapheap. “I didn’t feel ready to play older men,” he said. “I also didn’t take to the idea particularly – the character seemed too angry all the time.” A host of stars, including Les
Dawson, Timothy West, John Thaw, Eric Idle and Andrew Sachs, were then considered for the role until finally, Wilson, after reading further scripts, accepted the part.
Attention then switched to casting his wife. Again, Renwick had his sights set on one person – Annette Crosbie.
“I just sensed a truthfulness and intensity that would lift all this above the level of the conventional sitcom. I just knew she could bring incredible weight to the show,” says Renwick, whose new novelisation, One Foot In The Grave and Counting is published later this year, with a stage version in the works.
It’s an intensity she brought this year to the part of a particularly foul-mouthed care home resident in Ricky Gervais’s Netflix hit After Life.
One Foot’s director, Susie Belbin, says: “Annette would be so disappointed if she felt she hadn’t reached the required level.
“I’d catch her at rehearsals and she’d maybe fluff a word – one in a whole week. I’d tell her it didn’t matter but she’d scold herself, saying things like, ‘Stupid woman, get it right’.” Viewing figures quickly rocketed, peaking at 20 million for the 90-minute special, One Foot in the Algarve, screened on Boxing Day 1993. But there was always an element of surprise waiting around the corner in Renwick’s scripts, often reflected in incidents affecting Victor.
Among the most extreme examples came in the episode, The Pit And The Pendulum. After a disagreement with an aggressive gardener, Victor is planted up to his neck inside a chasm the gardener has dug in his garden. In reality, Wilson was crouched inside a wooden box buried in the earth with hot water bottles keeping him warm. It took three attempts to shoot the sequence.
He recalled: “It wasn’t very comfortable, mainly because I couldn’t do anything, even scratch my nose! It was miserable because I was in the hole for long spells – two or three hours – and, to top it all, there was a wind blowing.”
The standard of writing and acting remained high throughout but, after penning the fifth season, Renwick believed it was time to quit after one more series. He decided there was no alternative but to kill off his lead character. Recalling the decision, Richard says: “I knew David was finding it difficult to keep dreaming up ideas, and I agreed it was probably time to move on.”
Annette was saddened by the news. “I would have liked it to run for ever because I enjoyed it so much. But it was becoming a burden for David, with people constantly writing, ‘He’ll never top the last one!’ ”
Now, Renwick had to decide how Victor would die.
“I’d always felt it should probably be in a road accident – mainly because I get so exasperated and angry about reckless driving, which just seems to be getting worse and worse,” he says. “Of course, once I started writing, the dramatic imperative took over. Although I would have loved to have got the knife into that whole ‘yob’ element on the roads, it was more interesting to reveal the culprit was Margaret’s friend.
“You’re not quite sure how to react because you feel this great sympathy for Hannah Gordon’s character, who was racing to the hospital where her own husband was near death.”
Renwick had a lump in his throat while watching the death scene being filmed. The image of Victor’s arm falling into shot as his cap drifts away in a rivulet of rain was, says the writer, “suddenly very chilling and for a moment I felt the dramatic loss of a close friend”.
LETTING go after so many years was a wrench for everyone. For Richard, the sitcom marked the pinnacle of his career in terms of exposure and opportunities.
“One Foot opened everything up for me. Doing something that cultish means there is a price to pay, of course, inasmuch as sometimes people find it difficult to cast you,” he says. “Yes, it closed a few doors as well as opening them, but I feel extremely lucky to have played a character as popular as Victor.”
Would a show like One Foot be commissioned today?
“The route to acceptance in those days was a whole lot simpler,” admits Renwick. “What’s certain is that were the same scripts submitted now they wouldn’t be allowed to coast through unaltered as they did then.
“Sadly, with comedy, there’s rarely any right or wrong, and all too often you’re just bending to someone else’s taste.” While Renwick regards himself as essentially semi-retired now, Annette and Richard still work when the right projects come their way.
“I loved the tiny bit I did in After Life with Ricky Gervais, that was great – the nicest and happiest job I’ve been near for a long time,” says Annette. “But the TV business is so different now, too commercial and impersonal.”
As for Richard, he’s considering revisiting his one-man show, The Trial, based on an episode of One Foot. He’d originally planned to stage the sell-out show at the Edinburgh Festival in 2017 when he suffered a heart attack. “I was sitting, waiting to meet a writer and then it happened. I fell and was taken to hospital but don’t remember anything after that. I’m lucky to have survived, being 80 at the time. I appreciate how lucky I am to still be here.”
As for Victor Meldrew, he may have died but his memory undoubtedly lives on in the hearts of fans. ●●David Renwick’s new novelisation, One Foot In The Grave And Counting, will be published in hardback by Fantom Publishing later this year