The Best Episodes of Waiting for God

After confiding her doubts about marriage to Sarah, Diana has a raucous hen night with male strippers whilst Tom's stag night is a very staid affair. The befuddled Dennis Sparrow is to conduct the two wedding ceremonies separately but due to a double booking involving a funeral, a double wedding is on the cards after all - despite Marion's efforts to sabotage Tom's marrying Diana.

Director: Gareth Gwenlan

Writer: Michael Aitkens

Resident Dave Cartwright has died and at the wake the drink flows freely amongst the inhabitants of Bayview. Tom and Diana certainly have knocked it back and next morning wake up in bed together. Jane is shocked but Tom suddenly becomes very popular with the ladies in the home's bowling team.

Director: Gareth Gwenlan

Writer: Michael Aitkens

Diana collapses and is rushed to hospital where Baines tries, unsuccessfully to cop off with the lady doctor. Diana, wrongly, gets it into her head that she is dying of cancer and asks Tom to get her some sleeping pills so that she can end it all quickly. For Tom, however, there are limits as to what he will do for his best friend.

Director: Gareth Gwenlan

Writer: Michael Aitkens

The residents are getting wet waiting for a bus but when it arrives the driver claims that they cannot get on for free for another four minutes as they are too early, so Diana hauls him off the bus and Tom hi-jacks it on behalf of the residents. Later this will come in handy when a very pregnant Sarah arrives, seeking Diana's reluctant help to deliver her baby. Ultimately a girl arrives, unsurprisingly, Sarah calls her Diana.

Director: Gareth Gwenlan

Writer: Michael Aitkens

Baines meets a girl-friend, Lucy Maitland, at the hunt ball. His mother is coming to visit before going to stay with his sister so Jane poses as Lucy Maitland to put Mother off Harvey's new fiancee whilst Tom and Diana ham it up mercilessly pretending to be Baines' parents talking to Lucy. The result is that Lucy does not stay around and Jane has got her Baines back all to herself.

Director: Gareth Gwenlan

Writer: Michael Aitkens

After she has been accused of selfishness, Diana goes to work as a volunteer at a charity for elderly people and takes up the cause of an old lady about to be evicted by unscrupulous estate agent Janet Follett. Diana learns that Ms. Follett is Baines' new girl-friend and she has plans for Bayview which will not go down well with the residents. With a little help from Tom and her media background Diana sets out to expose Ms. Follett.

Director: Gareth Gwenlan

Writer: Michael Aitkens

Blaming Tom for introducing Marion to Dennis Sparrow, Geoffrey asks him to baby-sit his two children Skye and Tarquin, but they are little monsters who run rings round them. Fortunately, Diana is on hand to put them in their place. Baines decides to try computer dating to find his wife but Jane decides to put her oar in.

Director: Gareth Gwenlan

Writer: Michael Aitkens

Diana decides that she would like to enter politics and stands as an independent candidate for the Residents' Party. Baines has been asked to stand for the Tories so Tom decides he will have some fun and join in the race too. Diana is forced to stand down when Baines threatens to sack care worker Jenny but Diana makes sure that this is used against him too and his political career is a non-starter.

Director: Gareth Gwenlan

Writer: Michael Aitkens

It's April and yet it's still very cold so the residents do not appreciate it when Baines turns off the central heating and suggest the residents go jogging to keep warm. Tom and Diana decide to get jobs to get out of the icy-cold home. Tom gets a job working with Geoffrey, but he is such a pain that ,in order to get rid of him, Geoffrey pays Baines to put the heating back on.

Director: Gareth Gwenlan

Writer: Michael Aitkens

Whilst Baines is ecstatic about his new car Tom and Diana plan a little holiday and start a vacation fund. Unfortunately, Geoffrey decides to invest the money in the new intensive care wing that Baines is having built for Bayview. When Tom finds out he and Basil show how creative they can be when somebody conveniently leaves a bulldozer lying around and the holiday is on.

Director: Gareth Gwenlan

Writer: Michael Aitkens

Diana visits Tom in hospital. His operation to clear his prostrate cancer has been a success and he returns to Bayview with her. Unfortunately Geoffrey, who has had yet another falling-out with Marion, decides he wants to move in with them again. Baines is rejected by an exclusive golf club because he is unmarried.

Director: Gareth Gwenlan

Writer: Michael Aitkens

Baines is hiring Mr. Nakamura, a Japanese hotel consultant, to advise on the building of a new,space-saving wing to be built at Bayview - thereby enabling him to pack in more residents. Tom starts the Bayview Conservation Society, eventually enlisting Diana, to demonstrate that any such building would damage the wildlife and the natural environment, thus stopping the plan from going ahead.

Director: Gareth Gwenlan

Writer: Michael Aitkens

A letter from the mayor's office suggests that a royal personage will be gracing Bayview with a visit. Diana, already even more crotchety than ever, due to a painfully swollen foot, does not share Tom's monarchist views and holds forth on the pointlessness of the royals. Just as predictably the royal visit turns out to be very much less 'royal' than expected.

Director: Gareth Gwenlan

Writer: Michael Aitkens

Diana's foot shows no sign of healing and Tom is anxious for her to see a doctor. For all of her brash facade she is reluctant to seek medical advice in case she is given the worst possible scenario. However, she complies and is told that she has diabetes and must alter her diet. A relieved Tom proposes. Baines also proposes to Jane, in order to get his golf club membership, but she turns him down.

Director: Gareth Gwenlan

Writer: Michael Aitkens

Depressed vicar Dennis Sparrow is conducting the funeral of ex-Bayview resident Jimmy, but is making heavy weather of the eulogy and later he tells Tom and Diana that he is losing his faith. Geoffrey is back with Marion but their life is far from being a bed of roses and it's suggested Dennis tries to help them sort out their marriage. Not long afterwards Geoffrey announces that Marion and the vicar are now living together in Wales. Baines, meanwhile, is looking for a wife - a plan which involves Jane, though, sadly for her, not as a possible candidate, but as a helper.

Director: Gareth Gwenlan

Writer: Michael Aitkens

Whilst planning his pre-nuptial agreement with an eager Jane, Baines is told that he is not a proper priest and that any attempts he makes to get money from his ordination will lead to fraud charges. Diana is of course delighted but she has more pressing matters - Tom's threatened bungee jump. She agrees to marry him if only to stop the jump from going ahead but insists on her own pre-nuptial conditions.

Director: Gareth Gwenlan

Writer: Michael Aitkens

Diana and Jane are both taken aback by the bizarre ways of men, following their respective marriage proposals. Tom's proposal to Diana has brought on a shock and she collapses and is taken to hospital. Jane's decision that she will become a nun after all has tempted Harvey to consider joining the priesthood.

Director: Gareth Gwenlan

Writer: Michael Aitkens

A combination of genuine feelings for Jane, whom he is used to having around, plus the desire to still join the golf club, causes Baines to become a priest of the Order of the Flaming Sword of Las Vegas - by post.

Director: Gareth Gwenlan

Writer: Michael Aitkens

When Tom and Diana's life drawing art classes at the local college are terminated and complaining yields no joy, they decide to instigate their own at Bayview. Baines is to be the model, posing as Julius Caesar, bare beneath his toga for authenticity (or so Diana tells him). When an inspector calls at Bayview, Diana undoes the knot holding the toga in place and leaving Baines publicly nude. As a result, he has to go to a clinic where Jane reports that he has had a breakdown.

Director: Gareth Gwenlan

Writer: Michael Aitkens

Tom Ballard is put in Bayview retirement home by drunken daughter Marion and her weak husband Geoffrey. Many of the residents are very passive but not retired journalist Diana Trent, whose mission in life is to annoy 'the idiot Baines' - Harvey Baines, the home's manager. Initially she thinks Tom is rather dotty but when he tries to organize the residents into action against the home's poor food she knows she has found an ally.

Director: Gareth Gwenlan

Writer: Michael Aitkens

Diana rows with chief carer Jane for calling her a senior citizen and Tom does his best to ignore Marion and Geoffrey. Diana's niece Sarah has left her Porsche at the home so Diana drives Tom to Brighton in it. Harvey Baines reports it missing and the couple are stopped by the police but explain that Diana has her niece's permission to use it and Harvey is threatened with arrest for wasting police time.

Director: Gareth Gwenlan

Writer: Michael Aitkens

Tom really thinks that he won't have to wait for God much longer when he says he is dying and is rushed to hospital. He is discovered to have had a heart attack but he becomes very depressed and talks about suicide,writing 'die on Thursday' in his diary. In order to talk him out of what she believes to be his plan to end it all Diana threatens to join him.

Director: Gareth Gwenlan

Writer: Michael Aitkens

Tom is going to the christening of his nephew and wants Diana to accompany him but she is not keen because her arthritis is playing her up. Because she failed to declare it on her application form, Baines tries to get her evicted from the home. Tom doctors a 'naughty' photo of Baines to blackmail him into changing his mind but Diana uses her old press contacts to 'persuade' the committee to let her stay.

Director: Gareth Gwenlan

Writer: Michael Aitkens

Jane wants to become a nun so Baines sacks her and brings in stern German matron Greta Mueller, who is a tyrant and tells Sarah where Diana hid the Porsche. Tom cons Baines into making him the head of the Residents' Association and gets up a petition, which Baines thinks is to get rid of Diana, so he signs it. Actually it's to get rid of Greta, so he is forced to fire her and reinstate Jane.

Director: Gareth Gwenlan

Writer: Michael Aitkens

Baines decides that if Diana and Tom are seen to be mentally incompetent it will give him power of attorney over them and end all his troubles, particularly as the home is in financial difficulties. So he refers them to psychiatrist Dr.Darrow, for whom they act out a well-rehearsed pantomine of odd behaviour, leading the doctor to conclude that they are not mad, just a touch eccentric, with unexpected help coming from Sarah.

Director: Gareth Gwenlan

Writer: Michael Aitkens