The Good Life

This was my favorite BBC sitcom. Even though there was only 30 episodes, it ranks as my favorite among all comedies. I was so fortunate to have had access to public television growing up. Channel 13 in Dallas, Texas was the first public TV station to air "Monty Python's Flying Circus" in the U. S. (Three cheers to Eric Idle).

It was the "Good Neighbors" series that got me started in collecting and recording TV shows onto VHS tapes. One can not help but fall in love with the characters on this show. Tom and Barbara Good are the main characters who decide to live a life of total self-efficiency in the suburbs of London. It is their next door neighbors, Margo and Jerry Ledbetter, that bring in most of the laughs. They remain best of friends with the Good's even though their lifestyles become totally different.

I highly recommend this excellent British comedy. Everyone has a favorite and this show is mine. My favorite American TV sitcom is "The Bob Newhart Show". These two shows have nothing in common except that they make you laugh.

This is one of those series that give Britcoms such a good name! "Good Neighbors" (as we know it here in the states) is intelligent, funny, and extremely endearing. And who can beat the cast? Richard Briers is a very respected veteran now -- he was nominated for a Tony last year for "The Chairs" -- and he was just as talented when he was younger! Felicity Kendall is absolutely precious as his wife (I *love* her scratchy little voice!), and Paul Eddington and Penelope Keith are terrific as the snooty next-door neighbors. "Good Neighbors"/"The Good Life" is dry, but in a good way... You'll laugh out loud at this one! And it has a heart -- you'll fall in love with the Goods, and enjoy following them through their ups and downs! Do yourself a favor and check out this series!

In the seventies, television was good, and The Good Life (1975-1978) is no exception. It's a dry, pleasant and warm British situation comedy about an everyday man who decides on his 40th birthday to quit his job and become self-sufficient. The reason this comedy works better than most is down to its brilliant casting, all of the actors have such a believable chemistry. From Tom and Barbara Good (the fantastic Richard Briers and the lovely Felicity Kendall) to Jerry and Margot Ledbetter (the equally great coupling of Paul Eddington and Penelope Keith). The characters are so likeable, you can't help but warn to this show, it's funny, inoffensive and most of all happy, the kind of show that will lift you're spirits and put a smile on you're face. (Incidentally for a show that is so happy, the final episode is actually quite depressing and emotional a bit of a downer. But that aside you can still watch all the other episodes). This is great comedy with great actors that adds up to a true television classic...

I wonder just how many people in the mid 1970s - anywhere in the world - would have realised just how visionary writers John Esmonde and Bob Larbey were with this marvellous tale of a happily married suburban couple who decide to give up their daily grind and revert to a subsistence existence. Richard Briers and Felicity Kendall are great in the roles of the optimistic and naive "Tom" and his stoic and determined wife "Barbara" as they scrap, save, cannibalise, economise and basically do just about anything to avoid needing/earning/spending money - not an easy task. For me, the best parts come from their loyal and wealthy neighbours "Jerry" (Paul Eddington) and "Margo" (Penelope Keith). The former, the long suffering husband to the loving but terribly snobbish wife who looks down with a mix of disbelief and disdain on the newly self-sufficient folks next door. It features hilarious scenarios that take the most basic of themes - heating oil, vegetable patches, making your own clothes or cheese or wine and turns them into genuine laugh out loud comedy. It is simple and hugely effective, the humour working on many levels as the underpinning principles of love, loyalty and obstinacy marry well with sheer bloody mindedness and, on occasion, downright stupidity - but not just from the same side of their garden fence each time. It probably helps, as with the contemporaneous "Fawlty Towers" series that there was a very limited run. It clearly has an environmentalist aspect to the narrative, but it not delivered in the preachy, puritanical fashion that is so often the style used now - it successfully uses humour as a conduit for a message that is both potent and, frequently, laugh out loud. The writers don't flog the heart out of the joke, and the characters are given plenty of space to develop and shine. Great stuff well worth a watch.

I've always liked this BBC sitcom from the '70's, it was never uproariously funny in the same way as its channel contemporary Fawlty Towers was, but it was always pleasantly funny and always delivered. It was a genuine attempt to extract humour from a serious human decision, that of quitting the rat race and becoming self-sufficient in Surbiton. How the Good's managed it was the subject of about 30 half hour episodes, with a definite tapering off in story quality towards the end. They'd all proved their point: it could be seen to be possible and successful and once achieved could only repeat like the seasons of the year.

"Plough your own furrow" broadcast 4.4.75: This is where 40 year old Tom, with Barbara's considered support quits his job and they become self-sufficient. To celebrate their decision they dance around the goldfish pond at 3 in the morning much to their next door neighbours Jerry & Margot's disgust.

Tom, Jerry and Margot were all splendidly portrayed by Briers, Eddington and Keith, but as has been repeatedly pointed out in previous comments, it was Felicity Kendal who brought something extra to the shows. She provided a downbeat and downplayed realistic attitude that was at the time and still is completely beguiling and refreshing to watch. Those who couldn't get into it sure missed something! Sitcom was perhaps rather beneath her talents, and I always thought of Briers as a farceur, but they gelled together well in their opposition to the world.

8/10