A Very Important Article Examining the Contents of Victor Meldrew’s Kitchen Cabinets

I blame David Renwick entirely for this one.

Let me explain. Series 5 of One Foot in the Grave starts with one of the best episodes they ever made: “The Man Who Blew Away”. First broadcast on Christmas Day 1994, the unfortunate fate of Mr. Foskett surely has to be one of the grimmest things ever radiated to the nation under the guise of festive fun and frolics.

But Mr. Foskett – and Brian Murphy’s brilliant performance – isn’t what concerns us today. Instead, we want to focus on the opening scene in the kitchen between Victor and Margaret, where Victor rants about people being bad at comedy. A scene which plays out in my own kitchen daily, of course.

Now, the DVD release of Series 5 contains a commentary for “The Man Who Blew Away” from David Renwick and Richard Wilson. And among all his examinations about the nature of comedy, Renwick has this to say on the opening scene of the episode:

RENWICK: Another thing I remember here was: didn’t we have to do a retake of half this scene? I think for the eagle-eyed one of those china chickens goes missing from the corner of the shelf unit there in the kitchen between takes… I’ve got a feeling we had to redo some of it, something to do with the framing of the camera. There’s a little jug there just behind his right shoulder… and I’ve got a feeling in some of the shots there’s a chicken. (laughs)

And indeed, this is entirely correct. Just before the scene ends, a chicken magically appears in the cabinet as Margaret walks past it:

But there is one thing which Renwick fails to mention about this scene, because he’s not a complete loony about this kind of thing. Unfortunately, I am. So: can we figure out exactly when this scene was reshot?

Spoiler: yes.

First off, we need to find out exactly which recording the chicken appears in. Was it part of the original session, or was it part of the reshoot later on? This is easy enough to work out: we just have to look at the configuration of the kitchen cabinets later on in the episode. And sure enough:

Chickens all round. It’s clear, then: the chickens were the original shoot, and the jug props indicate the reshoot. And now we know this, we can indulge in what is probably the stupidest thing I have ever written.

Throughout the other episodes in Series 5 of One Foot in the Grave, what exactly are the items in the Meldrews’ kitchen cabinets?¹

Only a Story

The Affair of the Hollow Lady

Hole in the Sky

The Exterminating Angel

Hang on, that tall jug on the second shelf in “Hole in the Sky” looks familiar…

The Man Who Blew Away (Reshoot)

Hole in the Sky

And there we have it. The opening kitchen scene for “The Man Who Blew Away” was partially reshot during the production of “Hole in the Sky”. In fact, it seems like every part of the initial kitchen scene was reshot, apart from the very last shot of Margaret leaving the kitchen to join Victor in the living room.²

Which leaves us with one final observation. Now we know exactly which bits were the original scene, and which were reshot, let’s take one last look comparing the two recordings:

Original Shoot

Reshoot

Forget Margaret’s change of clothes; she takes her coat off during the scene, that’s fine. She certainly didn’t change all those items on the counter though. Or change the clothes on the kitchen table. Or, erm, swap out their cooker for an entirely different one.

That white cooker as seen in the reshoot is the one seen in the Meldrews’ kitchen for the rest of Series 5; that black top is only seen in the original shoot for “The Man Who Blew Away”. So, where did the Meldrews’ usual cooker disappear to during the original recording?

Reshoot

Original Shoot

I suspect Patrick is up to one of his nefarious schemes. Maybe he’s swapping around their cookers in the dead of the night to try and convince Victor he’s going round the twist.

Look, David Renwick started all this, it’s not my fault, OK?

UPDATE (27/9/21): Well, here is something both thoroughly wonderful, but also thoroughly bizarre. Many thanks to Tom Selway, who let me know about another piece of this puzzle which had entirely passed me by.

The final episode of One Foot in the Grave was broadcast on the 20th November 2000. The programme preceding it was I Don’t Believe It! The One Foot in the Grave Story – the usual kind of clips and talking heads show, hosted by Angus Deayton doing Angus Deayton. This documentary was also included as an extra on the Series 6 DVD release of the show.

And included in the programme is the following clip:

Black-top cooker? Chickens in the cabinet? This is the original take of the opening kitchen scene, before it was reshot a month later! Cropped to widescreen, of course, but definitely that original version.

Two thoughts occur. Firstly: can we actually figure out why the scene was reshot, from that brief clip? I’m afraid I draw a blank. Perhaps the dodgy framing that Renwick mentions on the commentary is cropped out, or maybe it was during a different part of the scene. It is notable, however, that in the reshot version we cut to a close-up of Victor for the “useless tossers” line; that works better for me than the wide shot of the original.

Secondly: how in the name of bloody hell did the documentary accidentally use the original, previously untransmitted version of the scene? Surely they’d just use the finished episode itself to grab the footage, not the raw studio tapes? It seems an incredibly odd thing to happen, especially in a show which is using the clip as an example of a classic scene, rather than anything more unusual.

The only thing which really makes sense to me here was if there is an early, unbroadcast edit of the episode hanging around, using the original version of the scene, and the documentary grabbed it by mistake. As ever with these subjects, we end up with more questions than answers. But isn’t that part of the fun?

NO, IT ISN’T, I WANT TO KNOW EVERYTHING PROPERLY, BYE.

1. “Rearranging the Dust” is not pictured, as it contains no scenes set in the Meldrews’ kitchen. ↩

2. For those of you who enjoy recording dates, I have poked around, and can provide. The studio material for “The Man Who Blew Away” was initially shot on the 9th October 1994; the reshoot during the “Hole in the Sky” studio session was on 6th November 1994, a month later. ↩

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