I had a dream for Dirty Feed, you know. A dream to document every single edit made to pre-watershed showings of One Foot in the Grave on the UKTV network: specifically, Gold, Drama, and Yesterday. OK, it’s not a dream many people have, I admit. But it was mine. They’d been bugging me for bloody years.
So in 2018, I saw that Series 1 was coming up for yet another repeat run, and took my chance. And sure enough, the first two series were broadcast in quick succession. I patiently waited for Series 3. And waited. And waited. And waited. It never seemed to appear. Nor did the 1990 Christmas Special, Who’s Listening? Series 5 came up, bizarrely, and I diligently recorded it. But Series 3 and 4 never appeared.
Well, it’s two years later, and I’m bored of waiting for them. Moreover, my Series 5 recordings got lost when my Sky+ box decided to break just as the country went into lockdown.1 So instead of this sitting on my WordPress backend any longer, here’s what UKTV had edited out of the first two series of the show, as broadcast pre-watershed in 2018. If they ever get round to showing the rest of the episodes again, rather than The Green Green Grass on endless repeat for some reason, I’ll finish this little project.
Cut dialogue is indicated like this. Let’s get going.
Series 1 Episode 1: The Big Sleep
Oddly, the the specific book title Margaret bought Victor is cut on the Gold showing:
MARGARET: Anyway, I thought I got you that book out of the library, Coping with Old Age?
VICTOR: What, the one with the two half-wits with silver wigs on the front cover, laughing uncontrollably at the concept of imminent death? Written by some fat spangled tart who does TV game shows?
First edit of the run, and we’ve already run into something I find completely inexplicable. I can’t think of any kind of compliance issue this joke could cause. For what it’s worth, an admittedly cursory glance doesn’t show up any books called Coping with Old Age which matches that description of the cover. Maybe I’ve missed one. For that matter, who exactly is the “fat spangled tart” who wrote it? (Suggestions gratefully received.)
Bizarrely enough, this was the only edit made to the whole of Series 1. Onto Series 2, then…
Series 2 Episode 1: In Luton Airport No-One Can Hear You Scream
One of the funniest lines in the episode, chopped out on Gold, as friendly old Nick Swainey comes round to visit Victor:
NICK: Nick Swainey. Outward Bound for for elderly. Last year? I called round and you told me to piss off? Yes, I thought it was you this morning when I looked out the window and saw you kicking that kiddie’s tricycle off the front lawn.
This is peculiar, in that last series we actually saw Victor telling Nick Swainey to piss off last series, and that wasn’t cut. Moreover, which is more likely to be offensive – Victor shouting it out angrily, or Nick’s mild-mannered expression of it? Yet it’s the latter which is removed.
(Annoyingly, this edit isn’t even especially well done technically. The dialogue is off-screen, so the picture is OK, but there’s an audible clunk.)
Series 2 Episode 2: We Have Put Her Living in the Tomb
Ah, a very well-remembered scene: the escaped tortoise suffering the indignity of a line marking machine across its back. But after the reveal of the tortoise with the white line, the following dialogue from Victor is cut in the Gold version:
VICTOR: You lazy bastards! Couldn’t you even have moved her out of the way first?
To be fair, the cut doesn’t actually affect the moment much; the funny bit is the reveal of the tortoise itself. In fact, if I can be an absolute prick and script edit David Renwick for a moment, I think it would have been funnier if he’d just stuck with “You lazy bastards!” The second line over-explains things a tad.
Still, it’s interesting to note that Gold will cut the word “bastards”, but the sight of a tortoise being burnt to death or buried alive in the same show are ABSOLUTELY FINE. Good to know.
Series 2 Episode 3: Dramatic Fever
Bleeps galore in this episode. Firstly, the following words are bleeped in the conversation in bed between Victor and Margaret:
MARGARET: He told me the pipe was a complete write-off. Corroded away to begorra, he said.
VICTOR: “Buggery”, I think you’ll find.
MARGARET: Sorry?
VICTOR: Corroded away to buggery. It’s a technical term they use in the plumbing industry.
“Bugger” has been allowed to stand without being bleeped or cut in previous episodes; presumably, the extra “y” makes all the difference. Again, it’s a shame that what is clearly one of the funniest jokes in the episode has been neutered.
Meanwhile, the loudmouth Australian dinner party guest later in the episode also causes problems. Again, the following words are bleeped:
GERRY: Wednesday lunchtime. I parked the car to go in the post office. When I come back, some cretinous arsehole has dumped a sackful of garbage all over inside of my car.
And:
GERRY: I’m not a vindictive man, but if I ever come across this bastard…
Gerry also uses the term “Jesus Christ”, but this is – perhaps surprisingly, considering the other edits – deemed to be fine.
And that’s your lot. And while I find a couple of them deeply annoying, it’s perhaps fewer edits than you might expect across the twelve episodes of the first two series. And hilariously, the deeply unsettling Series 2 episode Who Will Buy? gets away scot-free, with zero edits whatsoever. It turns out that the murder of a defenceless pensioner is entirely suitable daytime viewing, as long as somebody doesn’t say the word arsehole.
Join me at some future indeterminate point for Series 3, as soon as Gold stops showing The Royle Family on a loop.
Fucking piece of crap. ↩