Descent Into the Maelstrom
- Episode aired Feb 7, 1993
- 29m
Margaret collapses from nervous exhaustion which has been building up for the past 35 years.Margaret collapses from nervous exhaustion which has been building up for the past 35 years.Margaret collapses from nervous exhaustion which has been building up for the past 35 years.
Photos
Storyline
Did you know
- GoofsAt the end of the first scene, when Margaret switches off the kitchen light at night, bright light - presumably bright studio lighting - can be seen from between the blinds in front of the kitchen window.
- Quotes
[Mrs Warboys was meant to get Victor's dry-cleaning. But instead brought back a gorilla costume]
Victor Meldrew: What's this!
Mrs Warboys: Oh, yes. She said they got almost all the beetroot out if you didn't look too closely. Myself, I can hardly see a thing.
Victor Meldrew: No! This! I mean... It... It isn't my suit!
Mrs Warboys: Isn't it?
Victor Meldrew: Of course it... Where in the name of sanity did it come from?
Mrs Warboys: Oh, don't tell me they mixed up the tickets again.
Victor Meldrew: Mixed up the... You must have seen it as a mistake when you brought it out!
Mrs Warboys: Well, I don't know what your suit looks like, do I?
Victor Meldrew: Well, it doesn't bloody well look like this! I mean where do you think I shop? King Kong at C&A's!
- ConnectionsReferenced in Diminishing Returns: Captain America: The First Avenger (2018)
Technological advances and social networking did not interrupt his bitter-sweet days, in the Descent into Maelstrom episode, it was merely a dodgy waste disposer and confusion about his disposal of video recorders - an entirely obsolete technology, now - to the dispossessed.
This episode neatly encapsulates the dark elements of the series, which give it such a quirky but meaningful quality. Margaret collapsing from nervous exhaustion is hardly a laughing matter, yet Victor's clumsy efforts to help still amuse us. But at the core of this - and many other episodes - we are treated by David Renwick to a tour de force of farce and confusion - ranging from living impersonations of garden gnomes to unlikely mistakes at the dry cleaners leaving Victor at one point, sitting bemused on his chintz sofa surrounded by two gorilla outfits. Surrealism meets suburbia - you couldn't invent it - but David Renwick did.
The denouement, with its laugh out loud wit, was only exceeded by the farcical scene in which a woman seeking a buckshee video recorder is mistaken for an osteopath. These things happen - in One Foot In the Grave. The failure of British television to repeat the joys of this, the belly-laughs of Fawlty Towers or the cerebral charm of prison life in Porridge or - constrained by similar boundaries, Steptoe and Son, is something we have to put up with. Maybe the British sense of humour got lost in a traffic jam in the Blackwall Tunnel. Or perhaps, just perhaps, the darkness at the end of Victor's tunnel provides us with sufficient amusement even now.
- michael-1151
- Oct 6, 2015
Details
- Release date
- Country of origin
- Language
- Filming locations
- Production companies
- See more company credits at IMDbPro