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CHRISTMAS SPECIALS
One Foot in the Algarve
Sunday 26/12/93, BBC1
by Steve Williams
December 2000
 

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The first rule of sitcoms is common knowledge to all viewers - never take the characters away on holiday. From the dire British sitcom films of the '70s, like The Likely Lads and Are You Being Served?, to the interminable Birds of a Feather Christmas specials of the early '90s, almost every sitcom that has a "holiday" storyline has been a failure. The problems are obvious - the characters are away from their natural surroundings, and there have to be contrivances to get all the regulars together (why would Sharon and Tracey take Dorien on holiday with them, for example).

The second rule of sitcoms, of course, is that they should never be longer than 30 minutes - too long and the characters start to grate, and the storylines start being stretched to breaking point. Too often they feel compelled to bring in irrelevant sub-plots to pad out the episode. So an extended episode of a sitcom where the cast go off on holiday is normally a guaranteed stinker.

But One Foot in the Grave isn't like other sitcoms. In four series to 1993, David Renwick had managed to break every rule, with clever extended episodes and an ability to create comedy in every situation (by this point we'd already had the three classic episodes set respectively in the middle of the night, in a traffic jam, and with Victor waiting to do jury service). So the seasonal special, One Foot in the Algarve, is one of the best Christmas comedy specials ever.

Of course, the main plot is Victor Meldrew causing chaos in Portugal, as you'd expect, but there are at least half a dozen other plots, and the 90 minute running time means that all of them are able to be given time and attention. These plots include Mrs Warboys meeting her Portuguese pen friend, and Victor's encounters with a holidaying boxer in the villa next door, a Glaswegian on the beach, and a succession of amorous donkeys attracted by his new aftershave. There's also the ludicrous running joke involving Peter Cook's photographer character attempting to retrieve some compromising shots of a public figure from the Meldrew's possession. Best of all is a series of great set-pieces involving the shoddy quality of their accommodation - at first mistaken for a prison cell, where they lie in one room for two days before realising, and then when they unpack, realising that Victor's failed to bring the right suitcase and they've gone on holiday with "10 years worth of access statements and a hundred copies of the Beezer!"

So packed with story was this episode that a further plot, where Victor was to have an affair with a Portuguese woman, had to be dropped from the finished product, and thus we only see a few scenes implying this, and the only sour note in the whole programme is that these lead to nothing at all. But all the other plots resolve themselves in wholly satisfying ways - there's a laugh from the audience when Hugo the boxer's father complains that he no longer has the will to fight and that "by the end of this holiday, I want you to really want to punch someone!", because we know that someone is going to be Victor. Predictable? Maybe, but the way in which it happens - by Victor leading a donkey into his bathroom, who urinates in the bath while Hugo's in it - is priceless, if only for the great line when Victor's spotted - a ridiculous "And how are you this morning?"

The plot involving Peter Cook explores the benefits of an extended episode, and is basically, comedy at its broadest - a series of fabulously stupid Wile E Coyote-style pratfalls and slapstick sequences while he attempts to retrieve his photographs. This adds a great running motif to the episode, but what's great about the plot is that it really has no effect on the storyline at all - the Meldrews are totally oblivious to the photographer, and all the set pieces are generated by the main plot. It would be possible to edit out all of Peter Cook's scenes and the viewer probably wouldn't be able to notice. It's just an added bonus and storyline to provide more laughs in the episode.

As the episode progresses, the plot involving Mrs Warboys begins to take over, in what's basically a pilot for Renwick's Jonathan Creek - it has the same mix of subtle clues and subverted expectations. We're told that her pen friend's wife fell off a cliff some years ago, then we're led to believe that she was murdered. At the close of the episode, we find out that she faked her own death, thanks to detective work by Mrs Warboys. It's a great moment for the actress Doreen Mantle, as throughout the rest of the episode she's participated in some truly demeaning scenes - being inadvertently sold as a prostitute, having to suck a lemon, being taken to hospital while drunk, and best of all, going missing presumed fallen off a cliff. In the best scene in the programme, Victor and Margaret are taken to a mortuary for an identification, where they're informed that they think a shark bit off her foot - and can they identify the foot.

With great performances, superb plotting and excellent lines, it's 90 minutes of brilliant entertainment, and the viewer has to disagree with Margaret when she concludes "It's strange - I wasn't really all that keen on coming to Portugal, but now we're leaving I never want to see the bloody place again."