The series was occasionally the subject of controversy for some of its darker story elements, but nevertheless received a number of awards, including the 1992 BAFTA for Best Comedy.

The series features the exploits, mishaps and misadventures of irascible early retiree Victor Meldrew, who, after being made redundant from his job as a security guard at the age of 60, finds himself at war with the world and everything in it.

Victor is a tragic comedy character and sympathy is directed towards him as he becomes embroiled in complex misunderstandings, bureaucratic vanity and, at times, sheer bad luck.

Despite his grumpy demeanour Victor isn't totally devoid of compassion; in "Hearts of Darkness" he liberates elderly nursing home residents who were being mistreated by the staff, and in "Descent into The Maelstrom" he calls an incident room number and gives the location of an emotionally disturbed woman who abducted a baby and stole Margaret's mother's pearl earrings, which resulted in the woman being picked up by the police.

Examples include fearfully asking if a cat found frozen in their freezer is definitely dead and mentioning a friend who died of a terminal illness.

In "The Affair of the Hollow Lady", a greengrocer (played by Barbara Windsor) develops a soft spot for Victor and tries to convince Margaret that he has been unfaithful to her.

In this episode, she sums up her relationship with Victor by telling Ben, "He's the most sensitive person I've ever met and that's why I love him and why I constantly want to ram his head through a television screen."

In "Rearranging the Dust", Margaret recounts the time she first chose Victor at a party and, during a power cut, "shared their bodies" in the garden.

These mishaps are occasionally inadvertently aided by herself in some way, such as leaving the phone off the hook or giving permission to someone to enter the Meldrews' house when she is not there.

In a later series she has found a new job as a caregiver for the elderly, where she inadvertently discovers on a TV documentary that she has actually been unwittingly used as a sex worker by a man who did not need personal care but just enjoyed being bathed and dressed anyway.

In "The Worst Horror of All", when the couple attempted a surprise visit, the Meldrews hid in their house to give the impression they were away on holiday and then took the phone off the hook for several days afterwards, though these efforts to avoid them were in vain.

They are referenced a number of times in the series for giving the Meldrews bizarre and always unwanted presents that are seldom opened, usually involving a garish photograph of themselves.

In the final series the character returned, but the effects of a stroke had rendered him mute and forced him to "speak" with the aid of an electronic voice generator.

Great Aunt Joyce is mentioned as having a glass eye and has the habit of knitting bizarre items (such as six-fingered gloves) for Victor.

In the episode "The Secret of the Seven Sorcerers", Patrick is heard talking to her on the radio, seeking her advice on how to cope when Victor and Margaret invite him and Pippa around to dinner.

On his way to sell the images, he loses the roll of film whilst arguing at a phone box with the Meldrews and subsequently pursues them across the Algarve to retrieve it.

He suffers a number of disasters both related and unrelated to Victor and Margaret's own misfortunes, only to find that the film had actually fallen into the lining of his jacket and had been with him for much of his journey.

The production of the show was in a conventional sitcom format, with episodes taped live in front of a studio audience, interposed with pre-filmed location material.

[6] The series' opening credits were designed by Pete Wane and feature footage of a "Galapagos Giant Turtle", at the request of writer David Renwick, which "[serves] as a metaphor for grumpy old Victor Meldrew."

Afterward, Belbin retired owing to ill-health,[14] and the final series was produced by Jonathan P. Llewellyn and directed by Christine Gernon.

These include Susie Blake, John Bird, Tim Brooke-Taylor, Peter Cook, Diana Coupland, Phil Daniels, Edward de Souza, Hannah Gordon, Georgina Hale, Roy Hudd, Jimmy Jewel, Rula Lenska, Stephen Lewis, Paul Merton, Brian Murphy, Christopher Ryan, Jim Sweeney, Barbara Windsor, Joan Sims and Ray Winstone.

A few actors little-known at the time also appeared in one-off roles before going on to greater fame, including Lucy Davis, Joanna Scanlan, Eamonn Walker and Arabella Weir.

In the Christmas special "Endgame" during Margaret's alleged death scene, a compilation of clips from past episodes are accompanied by the song "River Runs Deep" performed by J. J. Cale.

ITV was accused of engineering this in order to damage the final episode's expected high ratings, but was later cleared by the Independent Television Commission.

[43] Due to the series' popularity, people who constantly complain and are irritated by minor things are often compared to Victor Meldrew by the British media.

The situation was conceived when Father Ted writers Graham Linehan and Arthur Mathews sat behind Wilson at a performance of Le Cirque du Soleil at the Royal Albert Hall.

They considered how "tasteless and wrong" it would be to lean forward to him every time that an acrobat did a stunt and yell the catchphrase and then they realised that that's exactly what their fictional priests would do.

The documentary features an interview with Wilson, sharing his memories of the show, along with other cast members Doreen Mantle, who was 96 years old at the time, Angus Deayton, as well as director Christine Gernon.

A German version was made of the series in 1996–97, Mit einem Bein im Grab (One Leg in the Grave), directed by Thomas Nennstiel and Frank Strecker.

Produced by commercial television channel TV4 and aired on SVT, it starred Gösta Ekman as "Victor Melldrov" and Lena Söderblom as his wife.