SERIES 5 - First broadcast 1994 - 1995

Christmas Special 1994: The Man Who Blew Away

Victor is reading the erotic adverts in the newspapers with great hilarity, and he has every right to be in a good mood because their rusty old car has been stolen leading to a handsome payout from the insurance company! That is, until someone rings with the good news that their car's been found in Finland, of all places.

Patrick goes for a job interview and discovers that through a washing mix-up he's wearing a pair of Victor's underwear, which puts him in a bad mood, of course! Victor is feuding with some children in the neighbourhood who keep leaving false limbs around the outside of his house, much to the horror of neighbours who assume the worst.

A party is held in the neighbourhood where the guests all sing The Laughing Policeman to Victor's annoyance. Having slept badly, he's horrified to receive a phone call from an old friend who's decided to just drop by. They entertain him begrudgingly and are surprised when he decides to climb on the roof and kill himself, first shimmying past Patrick's window naked as he entertains his clients. He leaves Victor his false teeth collection as a parting gift when he kills himself.

"Thank you Saint Total Bastard the Patron Saint of insurance companies" (Victor gets philosophical about his misfortune...)

First broadcast: 25th December 1994

1. Only A Story

Jean is staying with the Meldrews for a few days because her flat has been flooded in torrential rain, and she's driving Margaret mad with her tactless comments and her cleaning the house to bring it up to a better standard. Conversely, Victor seems exceptionally relaxed!

Jean has brought her budgie with her, and when she tampers with the heating to keep the room nice and cool for it, the freshly-applied wallpaper peels off. Later, the budgie goes missing and Margaret drags Victor around town looking for it. She forgot to take a key and, locked out of the house, they have to take refuge at Nick's whilst he holds a policeman party. In the midst of all this drama, the local paper is making several errors of both typing and ethics. They corrected the previous confusion of Victor with “Polly the Penguin” from the local zoo, but have now swapped over his address with that of the editor. So Victor receives all of the newspaper's correspondence, including that complaining of an article about the local M.P.'s secret gay relationship. So the local news channel films Victor getting undressed to give him (they think) a taste of his own medicine!

"Another, elderly gent, pays me just to stroke the soles of his feet with my breasts - I suppose it takes all sorts." (Victor thinks he receives reflexology from a prostitute)

First broadcast: 1st January 1995

2. The Affair Of The Hollow Lady

Victor and Margaret can't get into their house because they've had some very secure locks fitted: Victor climbs a ladder and into their bedroom, to receive a phone call from a neighbour telling him someone's trying to break into the house! Victor is infuriated when he finds out their fridge has been stolen when he nipped out of the kitchen. Meanwhile he explains to Margaret his concerns about Millicent, their greengrocer, and the way she flirts with him by wrapping his vegetables in a suggestive manner and leaving lipstick marks on vegetables!

Margaret receives a phone call saying that Jean had a car accident on the way back from her sister's in Blackpool and is in hospital, so Victor visits a lady encased in plaster, both to her horror and his when he discovers it isn't Jean! Jean won a waxwork model of her and has it delivered to the Meldrews'. Later on Millicent delivers potatoes offers Victor a lift to his football match. However, the van is towed away with him in it amongst the rotting vegetables; he misses his train and watches the match at Millicent's who suggests to Margaret that they've had an affair.

"£265 we paid for these locks so secure that even we can't get in!" (Margaret isn't happy about being locked out)

First broadcast: 8th January 1995

3. Rearranging The Dust

Victor and Margaret are bored in their solicitor's waiting room so Victor passes the time by counting the leaves on the plastic plant. Moreover, his testicles become trapped in the elastic, and he discovers a spider in his flies. Victor paces around the waiting room bored out of his brains, and when Margaret tells him to sit down and behave, so he accidentally wrecks a glass table when he puts hit feet up on it.

Victor gets up and complains about the amount of dust on the window ledges, and finds a bird nest on the inside of it. He also wrecks the blind when he plays with it. Victor then spends some time philosophising about dust and death. As Victor looks out of the window, he sees a dog urinating on his car so he throws a meringue at it, then argues with the owner out of the window. He goes to the toilet next door but the trickling noise can be heard very loudly indeed in the waiting room, much to Margaret's embarrassment. A solicitor comes into the waiting room not to invite Victor in but to hand him an assault charge regarding the meringue and dog incident!

"Be at home among the cobwebs." (Margaret's reaction to Victor finding a spider in his flies)

First broadcast: 15th January 1995

4. Hole In The Sky

Victor has taken up a new hobby: seafood cookery! The smell is causing some problems in the neighbourhood and Margaret is getting annoyed. She hopes that the reconciliation dinner that Pippa has planned will sort things out, although that went disastrously wrong when the restaurant thought that Patrick and Victor were secret lovers, making them share a bowl of soup and a sausage romantically and pose for photos after being serenaded by a gypsy violinist!

After accidentally washing with toilet freshener staining everything blue, Victor awaits builders to do a loft conversion, except Margaret finds their builders exceptionally annoying because one of them likes to play practical jokes on her, which he does as they work. A woman drops by to hurl abuse at the builders because they didn't build a wall so some youths attacked her model pelican; Patrick overhears this and assumes Victor is hosting a geriatric acid trip party. Victor finds a doll in the attic which he restores, but Margaret becomes very jealous about this, so decapitates the doll and puts the head in the microwave cooker. She's depressed because she's lost her job and fears that she'll turn into a female Victor with bizarre hobbies.

"Well whatever you told them one fact remains, doesn't it? The entire staff and management were under the hideous impression that Victor Meldrew and I were secret lovers." (The reconciliation meeting Pippa arranged went horribly wrong)

First broadcast: 22nd January 1995

5. The Exterminating Angel

Nick hires a nurse to help him cope with his mother, and he finds the nurse very attractive and she also flirts with him. The nurse drops by to aid Margaret when Victor scalds himself on their new but unpredictable shower, but is more excited about ready-minted frozen peas then Victor's scald.

Victor mentions to the nurse that he's been looking for a job as a driver, and her partner hires him. Unfortunately typically all doesn't go smoothly: Victor's employer has three lovely shiny and brand-new cars (at the start of his employment) but one by one each is destroyed by different unfortunate catastrophes. Firstly Victor argues with some rugby players who parked across two parking spaces, so they take revenge by turning his car over after Victor first just managed to rescue it from being wrecked in a carwash! The second car suffers an accident at Ronnie and Mildred's when Victor drives into the garage which has been dug out to cure the house's subsidence. Then Victor narrowly avoids a crash when a wasp escapes from his dental dressing (yes!); he runs the car off the road but it's safe and well until an army tank flattens it...

"Still, looking on the bright side, the break-down people managed to haul it out without making hardly a scratch on the front, so..." (Margaret tries to look on the bright side of catastrophe, Victor's boss disagrees)

First broadcast: 29th January 1995

Christmas Special 1995: The Wisdom Of The Witch

Victor has a new job as an odd-job man. But the "odd-job" is being a walking scarecrow, being told that he needed to sift through a farmer's field to look for a long-lost engagement ring. Pippa is jealous of Patrick's personal secretary, who has told her boyfriend that she's been having an affair with him to make him jealous; the boyfriend wants revenge upon Patrick.

Meanwhile, Cousin Ursula has died: the Meldrews need to clear out her house, but the Trenchs are happily packing to move into their new house. Victor accidentally sends the house clearance people next door, so the furniture is destroyed. In a bizarre mix-up, the jealous boyfriend locks Patrick up in Victor's boot, so Patrick is left alone in the house to be cleared with Victor and a poisonous spider which Victor tries to tempt out of the toilet with a banana.

After Victor breaks the news about their furniture, Patrick and Pippa then stay in a hotel where they check into the peep show room, so return stay the night with the Meldrews instead. The jealous boyfriend fights with Patrick and Victor whilst Pippa is frozen with fear in the car with the spider!

"There's been a slight hiccup, evidently, on your removal operation..." (Victor breaking the news delicately that all Patrick's furniture has been binned!)

First broadcast: 25th December 1995

Christmas Special 1996: Starbound

Victor, Margaret and Jean are traveling back from a day out and Jean reminds Victor of his travel sickness. He runs out to vomit and a group of schoolchildren, drawing the countryside, include this in their masterpieces, to the horror of their teacher.

Patrick's new boss sexually harasses him but Pippa makes him put up with it to keep his very well-paid job. Victor also starts to work for her as a gardener, and suddenly becomes very cheerful which starts to disturb Margaret. We soon find out why: Victor has accidentally been using the drugs stashed in her shed, as weed-killer; he's inhaled this many times a day and this has made him high. To Patrick's horror (and unemployment!) he accidentally drives the lawnmower into the very expensive greenhouse.

Some drug dealers come round pretending to be the police and Margaret directs them to the stash; the dealers give Jean a lift en-route but she bores them so much that they throw her out, wrapped in her dog's blanket; another dog enjoys the smell and tries to mate with her in the bag. Unfortunately, the same children are back to do some more countryside drawing and graphically illustrate the grotesque scene

"SOMEONE SHOULD TELL YOU - YOU'RE REALLY TEDIOUS COMPANY!" (The drug dealer is quick to get an accurate portrayal of Jean!)

First broadcast: 26th December 1996

Christmas Special 1997: Endgame

Victor goes shopping for an answer-phone and ends up being collared to assist with a police identity parade for a flasher. When he actually does make it home, the (Japanese) answer-phone doesn't work, which adds to Margaret's anger already incited by the rickety caravan he's bought; attempts to have it stolen and crushed go horribly wrong, so the caravan lives on.

Victor and Margaret go round to their new next-door neighbours' for dinner where they find Patrick has left collection of horror stories in warning for them, but the stories defy belief, of course. The neighbours are going away to a holiday cottage for a few days, but due to a little mix-up Margaret thinks they've booked it for her and Victor, which only becomes apparent when Victor accidentally goes to bed with them; he hides and sleeps in the en-suite and then on the conservatory roof, which causes a rude awakening for the neighbours! Margaret is left fuming and Victor decides to have a holiday by himself in the caravan; whilst he's away, Margaret has a heart attack and Victor has an odd premonition experience about this. She recovers, though, and assures Victor that he will die first!

"He only popped out to pick up a new answer-machine but, knowing him, anything could have happened." (Margaret is quite correct: Victor's ended up in a police identity parade!)

First broadcast: 25th December 1997