Victor Meldrew

Victor Meldrew was a fictional character in the popular BBC One sitcom One Foot in the Grave. Created by David Renwick and played by Richard Wilson, the character was the archetypal grumpy old man. Meldrew is a foil for the bothersome aspects of children, cars, animals, power cuts or next-door neighbours (his particular example being Patrick Trench, played by Angus Deayton).

Character
In the first episode, Meldrew is forced into retirement as a security guard, even though he is only 61 years old. The series follows Meldrew as he attempts to fill his new-found leisure with odd jobs, unusual idiosyncrasies, or to get a new working job. However, he regularly finds himself mistreated, misunderstood or simply the victim of bad luck, which regularly leads to his complaining heartily.

The pensioner is most famous for his catchphrase, "I don't believe it!", an expression of discontent which was actually used fairly infrequently. Quite often, he stops short at "don't". According to Wilson, this is because series creator Renwick wanted to avoid overusing it.. Other frequently used but lesser-known expressions of exasperation include "What in the name of bloody hell?!" and "In the name of sanity!"

Renwick once pointed out in an interview that the name "Victor" is ironic, since he almost always ends up as the loser. Victor is also something of a hypochondriac, keeping a medical book with him to look up every ailment he believes has befallen him.

The series was so successful that in the UK the term a Victor Meldrew has become a euphemism for a bitter and complaining elderly man. However, both Renwick and Wilson himself have disagreed that Victor is an example of this stereotype; Wilson himself once said in an interview that he was a "normal man in a world full of idiots", and he is shown to be more of a tragic comedy character, not bitter and grumpy by nature, but driven to it after becoming embroiled in complex misunderstandings, the victim of bureaucratic vanity and, at times, sheer bad luck.

Apparently misanthropic, Victor is sometimes depicted as an honest and sympathetic character. In the episode "Warm Champagne", his long-suffering wife Margaret defends him. When Margaret contemplates having an affair with Ben, a man she meets on holiday, Ben puts Victor down and accuses him of being insensitive. Margaret replies that Victor is in fact the most sensitive person she's ever met. If he weren't so sensitive, he wouldn't be upset by the smallest of things, and that is the reason she loves him. In "Descent into the Maelstrom", Margaret was visited by a woman she used to care for as a child, but Victor discovered that she was in fact mentally unstable and sought by the police for kidnapping a toddler; Victor turned her into the authorities and decided not to tell Margaret, knowing how much she loved the woman. In the episode, "Hearts of Darkness", Victor chanced upon a nursing home where the elderly residents were suffering severe abuse at the hands of the nurses. As revenge, Victor drugged the staff and crucified them in a nearby field, in a manner similar to scarecrows. In the episode "Timeless Time" it is implied that Victor and Margaret had a son named Stuart, but for a reason never stated he died.

In the final episode, "Things Aren't Simple Any More", Meldrew is killed after being hit by a car. This eliminated any realistic possibility of a seventh series. Passers-by left bouquets of flowers in homage at the railway bridge in Shawford, a small village in Hampshire, England, the filming location.

Reception
Phil Wickham of the University of Exeter notes that "the whole point of the series is that Meldrew is the only sane voice in a mad world".

Jonathan Bignell in his book Media Semiotics observes that the reason people laugh at Victor Meldrew is not simply that his behaviour is excessive, but that it contrasts with how all the other characters in the TV series are behaving.

Meldrew's name is associated with aggression or grumpiness; the journal Age and Ageing notes that "Viewers of Victor Meldrew (‘One Foot in the Grave’) would not be surprised that hostility contributes to mortality in grumpy old men." Similarly the Mail Online and the Telegraph both use Richard Wilson's Meldrew to refer to a "grump", or people who enjoy "a good moan", while Jenny Turner in the London Review of Books can observe that "The timing and rhythm (of Geoff Dyer's Jeff in Venice, Death in Varanasi) have the flippancy of stand-up comedy. The voice has Eeyore in it, and Morrissey and Victor Meldrew, and could only be English and from that postwar, post-punk generation".

The BBC recalls that firstly "The role of Victor Meldrew transformed Scottish TV-actor Richard Wilson into a household name and award-winning comedy performer." In addition, "So popular was his character that 'Victor Meldrew' has endured as a cultural reference for any grumpy old man." And finally and more loosely "many viewers identified with his rages at the irritants of modern life: litter, junk mail, traffic, rudeness, streetlamps and car mechanics and to some, Victor Meldrew was a champion of the people, albeit a very grumpy one."

"Victor Meldrew" is also used more generally as a shorthand for a user of bad language; for instance "Has Arsene Wenger become the Victor Meldrew of Premiership football?".

Victor Meldrew's persona is so powerful that Richard Wilson is perceived as "99 per cent Meldrew" by at least one critic, and when taking on a serious role as Malvolio in Shakespeare's Twelfth Night, another critic felt that Wilson's "performance was overly influenced by his desire to 'shed the Victor Meldrew stereotype'".