Copyright © 2026 OyList. All Rights Reserved.
Share
Items7
1
Wood and Walters (1982)
7.6/10on IMDb
First aired
This is where the partnership with Julie Walters starts on screen. Granada made a pilot, Two Creatures Great and Small, and then a short series, all written by Wood, with Walters as her equal partner and an early Duncan Preston in the supporting cast.
It is rougher than what came next, and the seventh episode is a compilation of sketches and songs from the earlier ones, so think of it as the sketchbook rather than the finished picture. For fans who already love As Seen on TV, though, it is a real pleasure to hear Wood's rhythms arriving. The pilot was nominated for a BAFTA for Best Light Entertainment Programme, and Network put the whole run and the pilot on one DVD in 2010.
More about Wood and Walters2
Victoria Wood: As Seen on TV (1985)
8.0/10on IMDb
First aired
The one to start with, and the one people quote. Across twelve half-hour episodes on BBC2 and a 40-minute special in 1987, Wood built a troupe around Julie Walters, Celia Imrie and Duncan Preston, with Patricia Routledge and Susie Blake dropping in every week.
The famous bit is Acorn Antiques, a spoof soap set in an antiques shop, with cheap sets, missed cues and Walters as the unforgettable tea lady Mrs Overall. But the quieter pieces are the real treat: the spoof slice-of-life documentaries, Margery and Joan's hopeless daytime magazine show, and Blake's snooty continuity announcer stitching it all together. The show won BAFTAs for its entire run, and the writing about ordinary women's small vanities has hardly dated.
More about Victoria Wood: As Seen on TV3
Victoria Wood (1989)
7.7/10on IMDb
First aired
After the sketches, Wood tried six one-off comedies on BBC1, each a self-contained story with her playing a character called Victoria. One strands her in an airport lounge, waiting with her fellow passengers for a delayed plane instead of enjoying a vacation in the sun; in Over to Pam she ends up impersonating a friend on a self-absorbed host's daytime chat show.
Be warned that it is the uneven one. Critics were mixed at the time, and Wood herself later said it was not as well written as it could have been. Watch it after the big two, for the stretches where her ear for small talk turns a stuck-in-a-room setup into something bittersweet and very funny.
More about Victoria Wood4
Victoria Wood's All Day Breakfast
Wood's return to sketches came as a 50-minute BBC One special on Christmas Day 1992, and it is mostly a send-up of British daytime television. She and Duncan Preston link the sketches as Sally and Martin, a married presenting couple modeled on the hosts of This Morning, a pair she found unintentionally funny.
If you liked Margery and Joan, this is that joke given a whole morning's schedule. Julie Walters, Celia Imrie and Susie Blake are back, and Alan Rickman turns up as himself. It is a single evening's watch, which makes it an easy bridge between the 1980s shows and dinnerladies.
More about Victoria Wood's All Day Breakfast5
dinnerladies (1998)
7.8/10on IMDb
First aired
The sitcom where she kept one regular cast across two series, and the best place to fall in love with her writing. Sixteen half-hour episodes on BBC One between 1998 and 2000, almost all in the canteen of a Manchester factory, on one set, in front of a live audience.
Wood plays Bren, the kind deputy manager who scrambles for words and lands on the wrong ones, alongside Thelma Barlow, Anne Reid, Celia Imrie, Maxine Peake, Shobna Gulati, Andrew Dunn and Duncan Preston, with Julie Walters as Bren's dreadful mother Petula. The comedy is all talk, overlapping and precise, and it makes room for real sadness too. It won Best New TV Comedy at the 1999 British Comedy Awards and placed 28th in the BBC's Britain's Best Sitcom poll in 2004.
More about dinnerladies6
Victoria Wood with All The Trimmings
7.8/10on IMDb
The big Christmas Day 2000 special, 55 minutes at the center of BBC One's schedule, with the dinnerladies women in tow: Julie Walters, Celia Imrie, Anne Reid, Maxine Peake and Shobna Gulati, plus a cameo crowd that includes Derek Jacobi, Hugh Laurie, Alan Rickman and Roger Moore.
The pick of it is the costume-drama spoof, a pitch-perfect take on bonnets and proposals that breaks off halfway and asks viewers to pay for the second half. There is also Jacobi as Scrooge and a send-up of Brief Encounter. It is busier and starrier than her series, so it suits a festive evening more than a deep dive.
More about Victoria Wood with All The Trimmings7
Victoria Wood's Mid-Life Christmas
6.2/10on IMDb
Wood's first sketch show for nine years went out on BBC One on Christmas Eve 2009 and drew 7.45 million viewers. The reason fans seek it out is Beyond the Marigolds, a mock documentary following Julie Walters as Bo Beaumont, the actress who once played Mrs Overall in Acorn Antiques, as she ventures into celebrity reality and dance shows.
Wood and Walters also reunite for a spoof of BBC period dramas, and Anton Du Beke, Delia Smith and Torvill and Dean all turn up. Watch it last: it lands best once you know the 1980s jokes it is looking back on.
More about Victoria Wood's Mid-Life Christmas
