Victor Meldrew reads the Daily Mirror, which for us oddballs that like this sort of thing, means we can have a bit of fun. Here’s the first time we see him with the paper, from the first episode Alive And Buried.
Which helps us find this page from the paper …
… which is from Saturday 14th October 1989, just a couple of months before the show first aired on the 7th February 1990.
Interestingly, a little later in this scene, a small continuity error means we see a different page.
And elsewhere in the same edition, there’s this.
Which given Victor’s own mishaps with a cat a few weeks later, seems a fun parallel.
Unfortunately I can’t find this paper from the closing scene.
In the second episode, The Big Sleep, we see this.
Which is this, from Friday 22 September 1989, and puts the exterior shoot a couple of weeks before the first studio night:
In The Valley Of Fear, you can just about make out this:
Which is from Friday 27th October 1989:
Confirmed by this later shot:
There’s the briefest of flashes on the front page in I’ll Retire To Bedlam.
And I think it’s this, from Friday 3rd November 1989:
Because of this:
Which is much more interesting than you think it might be, because in an earlier scene, set the night before, he’s reading this:
Which is from the Saturday edition on the 4th.
Victor lingers over this page in bed a little too long, but Margaret doesn’t notice.
So far the clues point to the fact that the first series was shot in broadcast order.
This one from episode five The Eternal Quadrangle, is a little earlier than we might expect …
Being from just three days later on Tuesday 7th November.
It’s quite fun that Victor is watching the slow demise of Mrs Thatcher.
The Return of the Speckled Band is the final episode of the series, and Victor has this on the table.
And that is this:
If you know the studio recording dates for the first series, please get in touch, as it would be nice to know how close to recording these papers are.
