Christmas Special 1991: The Man In The Long Black Coat

Victor and Patrick are sending each other post-it notes with petty messages on. Victor thinks Patrick deliberately made him fall into his new cement, and Patrick thinks Victor wanted to ruin his D.I.Y. work. Victor has accidentally had a pile of radioactive horse manure delivered outside the house, and this is upsetting the neighbours. Patrick is alarmed to find that Victor's been accidentally using his ginseng capsules as suppositories.

Pippa gives Margaret some herbal tea. Nick drops by and, clutching the herbal tea, asks Victor to look after his mother who's just returned from a cremation. Victor assumes that Nick's mother is dead and her ashes are in the jar, so guards it with his life. He drops it, and decides to replace it with some burnt newspapers. Margaret, not knowing any different, makes him a cup of "tea" before he goes to bed; he drinks it, and vomits it back up.

"'Have a Mars Bar'? What kind of advice is that? I'm standing here in an allotment covered in radioactive horse-sh*t, and all you can say is 'Have a Mars Bar'?" (Victor isn't reassured by the safety inspector's reassurance)

First broadcast: 30th December 1991

1. Monday Morning Will Be Fine

Victor and Margaret return home to find that their television, along with most of the contents of their living room, has been burgled. Victor is, of course, fuming; even more so when he discovers that the thieves were assisted by their next-door neighbours who hadn't realised that they were burglars, so they fed them and gave their van a jumpstart.

Stuck in and bored without television, they go to the pub, where Victor meets an old schoolmate who mistakes him for another schoolmate. Needing to keep up the lie has Victor taxied to the wrong house where he hides until his helpful friend, departs. Having to walk home in the rain leaves him voiceless and angry, and he takes this out on British Telecom when he phones them. The call is unfortunately misunderstood and Victor is arrested for making an obscene phone call, as well as attempted breaking-and-entering into the house where his kind schoolmate had given him a lift back to.

"She remembers the caller's use of the graphic phrases 'stark bollock naked' and 'dripping all down my legs'." (The Police Officer arresting Victor explains what the telephone operator misheard him saying.)

First broadcast: 2nd February 1992

2. Dreamland

Victor returns from a disastrous shopping trip in a very bad mood, because one of his shoes which has had put in to be repaired has been lost; but not all is lost if one is to look on the bright side: at least he was offered a half-price deal! For some reason this makes him angry rather than happy... He's then upset to have lost a game of Scrabble against Nick (even though he drew 7 Es). He goes to buy a pair of black shoes but discovers that they're still on the feet of the man who dies in them!

Shortly after this, Margaret goes missing without any explanation, and Victor and Jean spend a great deal of time worrying about her and looking for her. A long while later, Margaret returns by surprise when Victor finds her in bed, and she then explains to Victor that she went for a spontaneous break for a time of inner healing. After that brief reflective moment in the episode, the next day Victor goes to a garden fete run by Nick, where one of the P.G. Tips chimpanzees quickly leaps onto Victor because she finds him very attractive, it seems!

"Put him anywhere near a monkey and they go wild with excitement! Chimpanzees, orang-utans, the lot. We never have fathomed out why they find him so erotic!" (Margaret explains Victor's problem with monkeys)

First broadcast: 9th February 1992

3. The Broken Reflection

Victor picks up his Chinese takeaway meal from a restaurant riddled with prostitutes and notices another customer returning a dish of rice that jumps up and walks around. Worrying what he'll find in his own rice, when he arrives home he cages his boiled rice in a chip pan and prods at it; Patrick looks on, worried and horrified. Victor gives a lecture to a couple of prostitutes who drop litter on his front lawn, but they quickly take offence and plot their rather creative form of revenge.

Victor clears the garden and cuts the grass, which blows through the open window into the lounge, so, taking his gardening equipment, he promptly rakes it up as Patrick walks in to talk to the Meldrews about looking after the house whilst he and Pippa are on holiday. Seeing Victor raking grass from the floor makes him a bit worried about leaving Victor in charge of their house. Finally, one of the prostitutes' partners puts the hosepipe in Patrick's letterbox by mistake when plotting revenge on Victor, as he's watched him enter the house to water the plants. Needless to say, Patrick is fuming when he returns to a drenched house!

"We might just as well go away for the week and ask the Terminator to come in and water our flowers" (Patrick explains to Pippa that he's unhappy with Victor looking after their plants)

First broadcast: 16th February 1992

4. The Beast In The Cage

Victor, Margaret and Jean planned to go to the zoo. But they only get as far as the motorway where they're then stuck in a traffic jam, where the whole episode is set. Jean was sent on a mercy mission to buy some crisps, but doesn't bring back any because she forgot what flavour Victor wanted. Jean continues to bumble on about the journey, and Victor becomes irritated and frustrated. He also manages quite skilfully in his unique manner to argue and fall out with an impressive quantity of people despite spending most of the time stationary on the motorway staring up a horse's rear end!

The only time he does leave the car is when sod's law fulfils itself because he leaves to go to the toilet, but the traffic moves so he has to leap back in. The icing on the cake, for Victor in the traffic jam, is when he puts in a tape to play some nice music, but discovers that the car mechanics who serviced his car have made their own music brimming full of insults to Victor! The episode ends with Victor having a bit of a philosophical moment about the nature of time.

"I wish you were dead!" (Margaret is losing patience with Victor as they remain stuck in the car!)

First broadcast: 23rd February 1992

5. Beware The Trickster On The Roof

Victor is making a teddy-bear out of lots of bits of old teddy-bears, but Margaret wishes he didn't as it looks very grotesque - almost a Franken-teddy! Patrick and Pippa think he's doing strange things to these old teddy-bears (like giving one a Caesarean section) when they look out of the window to see him doing his unique brand of DIY! This worries them because they're trying to sell the house to get away from Victor and fear a bad impression may be created to those coming to view the house!

Unfortunately the first buyers' child finds the Franken-teddy and screams hysterically; the second buyers turn up as Victor shouts abuse out of his bedroom window. Nick brings Victor and Margaret a cursed scorpion from his holiday, and it works outstandingly well. A model minicab is delivered when Victor books a taxi; there's a leak in the bedroom ceiling; the thieves from Episode 3:1 phone back asking how to work the stolen television; Victor wins the scorpion when he gives it to a raffle, and a cow rather than the requested cot is delivered to him, which crashes through into Patrick and Pippa's lounge as the third buyers are looking around!

"He's got a teddy-bear clamped in a Black and Decker workmate and he's gouging its eyes out with a potato peeler." (Victor is acting strangely in the garden)

First broadcast: 1st March 1992

6. The Worst Horror Of All

Victor is in A. & E. because the garden shed collapsed and fell on him. He's sat, sedated, with a fixed grin on his face (for a change!), and is laughing uncontrollably at everything he sees. While they're waiting for Victor's treatment, Jean asks Margaret to take her and Cousin Wilfred to a television recording, which they agree to. As Margaret drives to Jean's from hospital, she drives into a ladder and a man falls onto the roof of their car. When they arrive back to collect Cousin Wilfred, they come across the very concussed and confused man they accidentally picked up earlier. Thinking he's Cousin Wilfred, they take him to the studio where he sleeps throughout the filming and has to be carried to the car, still asleep. After suffering a poorly-attended and boring recording, they carry the man back into the car, still asleep. They arrive back at Jean's to find Cousin Wilfred whom they were supposed to have picked up! Victor finds a job, as a valet, but quickly loses his temper with a pretentious customer and after tolerating his manner for a few hours, is rude to him before walking out once again to glorious retirement.

"God knows what was in that painkilling injection they gave him: he was laughing at a pencil a few minutes ago." (Margaret explains why Victor is acting so out of character)

First broadcast: 8th March 1992