The Goodies (TV series)

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The Goodies
Format Comedy
Created by Tim Brooke-Taylor
Graeme Garden
Bill Oddie
Starring Tim Brooke-Taylor
Graeme Garden
Bill Oddie
Country of origin Flag of the United Kingdom United Kingdom
No. of episodes 74 (including specials)
(List of episodes)
Production
Running time 30 – 50 minutes
Broadcast
Original channel BBC 2
ITV (for final series)
Original run 8 November 1970
– 13 February 1982
External links
IMDb profile
This article discusses The Goodies comedy television series.
For information about the formation of The Goodies group, and for information about the origins and development of the series, see The Goodies.

The Goodies is a surreal British television comedy series of the 1970s and early 1980s.

The series, which combines sketches and situation comedy, was shown during prime time, and is popular with all ages.

The show was co-created and co-written by Tim Brooke-Taylor, Graeme Garden and Bill Oddie, who also all starred in it. Bill Oddie wrote the music for the series — while "The Goodies Theme" was co-written by Bill Oddie and Michael Gibbs.

The directors/producers of The Goodies series were John Howard Davies, Jim Franklin and Bob Spiers.

The television series was made by the BBC 2[1] from 1970 to 1980 — and was then made by the ITV company LWT from 1981 to 1982.

An early title which was considered for the series was Narrow Your Mind (following on from Broaden Your Mind) and prior to that the working title was Super Chaps Three.[2]

Contents

[edit] Basic structure of the series

The series' basic structure revolved around the trio offering themselves for hire — with the tagline "We Do Anything, Anytime" — to perform all sorts of ridiculous but benevolent tasks. Under this pretext, the show explored all sorts of off-the-wall scenarios for comedic potential. Many episodes parodied current events, such as an episode where the black population of South Africa immigrates to Great Britain to escape apartheid. As this means that the white South Africans no longer have anyone to exploit and oppress, they introduce a new system called "apart-height", where short people (Bill and a number of jockeys) are discriminated against. Others were more abstractly philosophical, such as an episode in which the trio spend Christmas Eve together waiting for the Earth to be blown up by arrangement of the world's governments.

The "Christmas Eve" episode (titled "Earthanasia") was one of the two episodes which took place entirely in one room. The other, "The End", occurred when Graeme accidentally had the office encased in an enormous block of concrete. This type of episode was usually made when the entire location budget for the season had been spent, forcing the trio to come up with a script that relied entirely on character interaction. These "claustrophobic" episodes often worked surprisingly well.

[edit] Characters and production techniques

The Goodies — Bill, Tim and Graeme
The Goodies — Bill, Tim and Graeme

The show featured extensive use of slapstick (often performed using sped-up photography and clever, though low-budget, visual effects), such as when they built a railway station together, and awoke the next morning to discover that the construction equipment outside (steam shovel, bulldozer, backhoe) had come to life, and were lumbering, growling, and battling like dinosaurs.

Other episodes featured parodies of contemporary pop music (in the loosest sense of the term) composed by Oddie (some of which went on to commercial success in the British charts, among them the hit single "Funky Gibbon") as well as character-based comedy. Some early episodes were interrupted by spoofs of contemporary commercials.

The group also acknowledges their debt to the usage of music in silent movies. In The Movies episode, they buy an old movie studio, and attempt to make their own epic film: MacBeth Meets Truffaut The Wonder Dog. After several 'takes,' they argue, and each begins to make their own style of movie. The episode finished with an extended silent movie segment, in which each one's movie comically interferes with the others.

The characters are based around the personae of Garden (a "mad scientist"), Brooke-Taylor (a conservative, fashionable, sexually-repressed, Tory-voting royalist), and Oddie (a scruffy, occasionally violent, far left-leaning anarchist from Lancashire). The group have suggested that the characters of Graeme, Tim, and Bill represent the Liberal, Conservative and Labour wings of British politics or middle-class, upper-class, and working-class stereotypes respectively. The characters played up to their stereotypes, but were not necessarily based on the actor playing the character. This is not immediately obvious as they were called by their own names, and had some minor characteristics in common. In reality, Garden is a medical doctor, Brooke-Taylor is not really conservative ("But I had the double-barrelled name so I was always going to play the Tory" [1]) and Oddie is a pacifist, ornithologist and active environmentalist.

[edit] The Goodies episodes

[edit] Goodies' episodes

Main article: List of The Goodies episodes
  • The Goodies made 74 episodes (including specials).

[edit] Dual Goodies' roles

Episodes, in which the Goodies appeared as other roles, including appearing as doubles of themselves — while also appearing in their usual roles of Tim, Bill and Graeme — included the following:

[edit] Alternative Goodies' roles

  • Rome Antics, in which Tim, Bill and Graeme appeared as Ancient Goodies
    (the episode takes place during the time of the Roman Empire).
  • War Babies, in which Tim, Bill and Graeme appeared as 2 year old Goodies
    (the episode takes place during the time of World War II).

[edit] Tim's uncles

Tim's uncles are featured in the following episodes:

[edit] Guest stars

Main article: The Goodies guests

[edit] The Monty Python connection

Tim Brooke-Taylor and Bill Oddie, and Monty Python members John Cleese, Graham Chapman, all attended the University of Cambridge at the same time — and, as well as being friends, they were all members of Cambridge University Footlights Club, appearing in Footlights revues together (including in the revue "A Clump of Plinths" which was later retitled "Cambridge Circus"). Graeme Garden and Eric Idle, who were slightly younger than the others, were also members of Footlights, and appeared in the following year's revue. [3] [4]

The shared comedy background of the members of the Goodies and Monty Python also included radio and television comedy programmes — "I'm Sorry, I'll Read That Again", "At Last the 1948 Show", "Twice a Fortnight", "How to Irritate People" and in Amnesty International benefit shows, including:

  • "The Secret Policeman's Other Ball", in which Tim appeared as "Tracey" in the comedy sketch "Top of the Form" (John Cleese, who had written the sketch, also appeared in the sketch as the "Quiz Master"). Later, Tim also appeared with John Cleese and Graham Chapman in the dance comedy trio sketch "Cha, Cha, Cha".

[edit] Monty Python parodies and imitations

Goodies' episodes, in which "Monty Python’s Flying Circus" was either parodied or alluded to, included the following:

[edit] References

  1. ^ "The Penguin TV Companion" (2nd Edition) — Jeff Evans, Penguin Books Ltd., London, 2003
  2. ^ Low, Lenny Ann. "Why fame seems funny to manic trio", The Sydney Morning Herald, 2005-02-23. Retrieved on 2008-02-02. 
  3. ^ From Fringe to Flying Circus — 'Celebrating a Unique Generation of Comedy 1960-1980' — Roger Wilmut, Eyre Methuen Ltd, 1980.
  4. ^ "Footlights! — 'A Hundred Years of Cambridge Comedy'" — Robert Hewison, Methuen London Ltd, 1983.

[edit] Further reading

  • "The Complete Goodies" — Robert Ross, B T Batsford, London, 2000
  • "The Goodies Rule OK" — Robert Ross, Carlton Books Ltd, Sydney, 2006
  • "TV Heaven" — Jim Sangster & Paul Condon, HarperCollinsPublishers, London, 2005
  • "The Goodies Episode Summaries" — Brett Allender
  • "The Goodies — Fact File" — Matthew K. Sharp

[edit] See also

[edit] External links


The Goodies — The Goodies TV series
Tim Brooke-Taylor — Graeme Garden — Bill Oddie