The Goodies
Tim Brooke-Taylor, Bill Oddie and Graeme Garden
The Goodies was a surreal British television comedy series of the 1970s and early 1980s combining sketches and situation comedy and starring Graeme Garden, Tim Brooke-Taylor and Bill Oddie.
Cambridge University
The three actors in The Goodies met as students at the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom, where Tim Brooke-Taylor was studying for a Law Degree, Graeme Garden was studying for a Medical Degree, and Bill Oddie was studying for an English Degree. It was as undergraduate students at the University of Cambridge that Tim, Bill and Graeme also met John Cleese, Graham Chapman and Eric Idle, who would later become founding members of Monty Python. The group of students became close friends and studied together, including Tim Brooke-Taylor and John Cleese (who were both Law students, but at different Colleges within the University) swapping lecture notes, which gave them a more complete perspective on mutual subjects than they would have if they had only studied with their own University Colleges. They all became members of the prestigious Cambridge University Footlights Club, with Tim Brooke-Taylor becoming President in 1963 and Graeme Garden taking over in 1964.[1] [2]
Graeme Garden was himself succeeded, as the Footlights Club President, by Eric Idle (who was President in 1965 — and who became aware of the Footlights Club when he auditioned for a Pembroke College "smoker", for Tim Brooke-Taylor and Bill Oddie.
Life before "The Goodies"
"Kitten Kong" (VHS)
Tim Brooke-Taylor, Graeme Garden and Bill Oddie were cast members of the highly successful 1960s BBC radio comedy show I'm Sorry, I'll Read That Again, which also featured John Cleese, which lasted for many years. I'm Sorry, I'll Read That Again resulted from the successful 1963 Cambridge University Footlights Club revue "A Clump of Plinths" (which, after having its title changed to "Cambridge Circus", went on to play at West End in London, England, followed by a tour of New Zealand and Broadway in New York, United States of America) and included an appearance on the top rating Ed Sullivan Show.
They also took part in various TV shows with other people, including Tim Brooke-Taylor in "At Last the 1948 Show" (with John Cleese, Graham Chapman and Marty Feldman), and Tim Brooke-Taylor taking part in "Marty" (with Marty Feldman, John Junkin and Roland McLeod). Graeme Garden and Bill Oddie took part in "Twice a Fortnight" (with Michael Palin, Terry Jones and Jonathan Lynn), before Tim, Bill and Graeme worked on the late 1960s TV show Broaden Your Mind (of which only about ten minutes survives).
The Goodies
The Goodies ran from 1970 to 1980 on BBC2, with 70 episodes, mostly thirty minutes in length except for two forty-five minute Christmas specials ("The Goodies and the Beanstalk" and "The Goodies Rule - OK!"). The Goodies never had a formal contract with the BBC, and when the BBC Light Entertainment budget for 1980 was exhausted by the production of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy TV series, they signed a contract with London Weekend Television for ITV. However, after one half-hour Christmas special ("Snow White 2") in 1981, and a six-part series in early 1982, the series was cancelled. In recent interviews the cast suggest the reasons were mainly economic—a typical Goodies sketch was more expensive than it appeared.
As well as being very successful on the TV screen, in their heyday The Goodies also produced successful books e.g. "The Goodies File", "The Goodies Book of Criminal Records", "The Making of The Goodies Disaster Movie" and a string of successful chart singles penned by the musically talented Oddie, in 1975 they chalked up five hit singles in twelve months including The Inbetweenies and Funky Gibbon (no. 4 in the charts).
Repeats and commercial releases
Unlike most long-running BBC comedy series, The Goodies has not enjoyed extensive repeats on terrestrial television in the UK, the BBC in fact refusing to allow them since 1986. The BBC released two videos of the series in the 1990s, but did not seem enthusiastic about promoting them.
Sky's short-lived Comedy Channel broadcast some of the later Goodies episodes in the early 1990s. Later UK Gold screened many of the earlier episodes, often with commercial timing cuts. The same episodes subsequently aired on UK Arena, also cut. When UK Arena became UK Drama, later UKTV Drama, The Goodies was dropped along with its other comedy and documentary shows.
The cast finally took matters into their own hands and arranged for the release of a digitally-remastered "best of" selection entitled The Goodies ... At Last on VHS and Region 0 DVD in April, 2003. A second volume, The Goodies...At Last a Second Helping was released on Region 2 in February, 2005.
In Australia, the series has had continued popularity. It was repeated through the 1970s and 1980s by the ABC — although, as the show was typically broadcast in the 25-minute 5:30pm children's timeslot, portions often had to be cut. The unedited episodes were repeated frequently on the pay television channel UKTV during the 1990s. The DVDs are available in Australia under different titles to the UK releases. The DVD titles in Australia are The Goodies - 8 Delicious Episodes and The Goodies - A Tasty Second Helping, respectively.
The Goodies' DVDs are also available in a box set with a commemorative booklet (The Goodies - The Tasty Box), though their content is unchanged.
In the United States, the series was shown widely in syndication during the late 1970s and early 1980s, but has been little seen since. The series was also shown in Canada on the CBC national broadcast network during those same years, in the traditional "after school" timeslot. In Germany, The Goodies was shown in the late seventies as part of the variety show Engelbert and the Young generation. The show was dubbed into German, and because the jokes were more visual than dialog based, it translated very well.
In 2004, an episode of the BBC documentary series Comedy Connections was devoted to the Goodies.
Christmas 2005 saw a 90-minute Goodies special, including a documentary about the series, broadcast on BBC Two.
Basic plot structure
The series' basic structure revolved around the trio offering themselves for hire - with the tagline "We Do Anything, Anytime, Anywhere" - to perform all sorts of ridiculous but benevolent tasks. This pretext allowed the show to explore all sorts of off-the-wall scenarios for comedic potential. Sometimes these were thinly-disguised comments on current events (for example, a show where the South African government gave up on Apartheid and implemented "apart-height", where short people were separated from the rest of society), where others were more abstractly philosophical (where the trio spend Christmas Eve together waiting for the world to be blown up by government edict). This was one of a number of episodes that take place entirely in one room. This was usually because 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.
Characters and production techniques
The show featured extensive use of slapstick (often performed using speeded-up photography and clever, though low-budget, visual effects), such as when they built a country house 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", a staple of scout-hut discos of the period) 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 one episode, they inherit 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, sexually-repressed, Tory-voting royalist), and Oddie (a scruffy, occasionally violent, left-leaning anarchist from the North). 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" [3]) and Oddie is a pacifist, ornithologist and active environmentalist.
The show benefited greatly from the input of director Bob Spiers, who later directed Absolutely Fabulous, Press Gang, some episodes of Fawlty Towers and the film Spiceworld.
Famous Guest Stars
The guest stars are listed in alphabetical order:
Jane Asher, Michael Aspel, Michael Barratt, George Baker, Alfie Bass, Stanley Baxter, Cilla Black, Tony Blackburn, John Bluthal, Bernard Bresslaw, Richard Briers, Erik Chitty, John Cleese, Harry H. Corbett, Barry Cryer, David Dimbleby, Jack Douglas, Bill Fraser, Liz Frazer, Tommy Godrey, Patricia Hayes, Peter Jones, Jo Kendall, Roy Kinnear, Philip Madoc, Magnus Magnusson, Henry McGee, John Le Mesurier, Norman Mitchell, Patrick Moore, Julian Orchard, Geoffrey Palmer, Jon Pertwee, David Rappaport, Beryl Reid, Joan Sims, Wayne Sleep, Mel Smith, Ronnie Stevens, Mollie Sugden, Frank Thornton, Patrick Troughton, Eddie Waring, Richard Wattis, Bill Weston, June Whitfield, Frank Windsor, Kenneth Wolstenholme, Corbett Woodall and Tessa Wyatt.
Cultural influence
It may be argued that The Goodies antics brought the surrealist adventure traditions of The Goon Show to the television screen without diverting into areas of coarseness or topical satire to the same extent as other (more famous) British television series like Till Death Us Do Part, Monty Python's Flying Circus, Not Only But Also, Not the Nine O'Clock News or, much later, The Young Ones. There were satirical episodes of The Goodies. These included South Africa (apartheid), Punky Business (punk), and an episode satirizing Mary Whitehouse's influence on television, Gender Education. The Goodies appealed on an intellectual level, and also had a level of appeal to children as a consequence of its visual humour and slapstick.
Stella, an American trio, has a show on Comedy Central that is very similar to the Goodies in terms of basic plot line — with the trio even riding a trandem. The television series premiered in the United States on June 28, 2005.
On 24 March 1975 Alex Mitchell, a 50-year-old bricklayer from King's Lynn literally died laughing while watching an episode of The Goodies. According to his wife, who was a witness, Mitchell was unable to stop laughing whilst watching a sketch in the episode "Kung Fu Kapers" in which Tim Brooke-Taylor, dressed as a kilted Scotsman, used a set of bagpipes to defend himself from a psychopathic black pudding (from the Lancastrian martial art "Ecky-Thump") in a demonstration of the Scottish martial art of "Hoots-Toot-ochaye." After twenty-five minutes of continuous laughter Mitchell finally slumped on the sofa and expired from heart failure. His widow later sent the Goodies a letter thanking them for making Mitchell's final moments so pleasant.
Other collaborations
Tim Brooke-Taylor was a writer/performer on the television comedy series At Last the 1948 Show (which also included John Cleese, Graham Chapman and Marty Feldman in the cast), in which Bill Oddie guest starred in some of the episodes. The famous 'Four Yorkshiremen' sketch was co-written by the four writers/performers of the series — Tim Brooke-Taylor, John Cleese, Graham Chapman and Marty Feldman. The 'Four Yorkshiremen' sketch was one of the few sketches which survived the destruction of the series (by the tapes being wiped), by David Frost's Paradine Productions (which produced the series). The 'Four Yorkshiremen' sketch appears on the DVD of At Last the 1948 Show.
Tim was a cast member of the television comedy series Marty with Marty Feldman and John Junkin - a compilation of the two series of "Marty" has been released on a DVD with the title of "It's Marty".
Tim was also a cast member of John Cleese's special How to Irritate People.
Tim was a regular cast member of the long running Radio 2 comedy sketch show Hello, Cheeky! along with John Junkin and Barry Cryer, which ran from 1973 to 1979. The series also transferred to Yorkshire Television for two series in 1975 and 1976.
Graeme Garden and Bill Oddie were writers/performers on the television comedy series Twice a Fortnight (which also included Terry Jones, Michael Palin and Jonathan Lynn in the cast).
Tim Brooke-Taylor and Graeme Garden were writers/performers on the television comedy series Broaden Your Mind, with Bill Oddie joining them for the second series.
The three writers and performers also collaborated on the 1983 animated children's programme Bananaman, where Tim, Bill and Graeme played various (voice) roles.
Bill Oddie has occasionally appeared on the BBC Radio 4 panel game I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue, on which Garden and Brooke-Taylor are regular panelists.
Graeme Garden and Bill Oddie co-wrote several of the episodes of the television comedy series Doctor in the House — co-writing most of the first season episodes of the series - and co-writing all of the second season episodes of the series.
In 1982 Garden and Oddie wrote, but did not perform in, a 6-part science fiction sitcom called Astronauts for Central and ITV. The show was set in an international space station in the near future.
Garden was a regular team captain on the political satire game show If I Ruled the World. Brooke-Taylor appeared as a guest in one episode, and during the game "I Couldn't Disagree More" he proposed that it was high time The Goodies episodes were repeated. Garden was obliged by the rules of the game to refute this statement, and replied "I couldn't disagree more...it was time to repeat them ten, fifteen years ago." This was followed by uproarious applause from the studio audience.
In 2004, Garden and Brooke-Taylor were co-presenters of Channel 4's daytime game show Beat the Nation, in which they indulged in usual game show "banter", but took the quiz itself seriously. Oddie hosts a very successful series of nature programmes for the BBC.
2005 Australian reunion shows
The trio reunited in Australia for "The Goodies (Still A)Live On Stage" as part of Sydney's Big Laugh Comedy Festival in March 2005. The show toured the country, visiting Melbourne, Brisbane and Canberra and selling out most of the 13 performances. [4]
A further Australian tour by the Goodies, sans Bill, took place during November and December 2005. [5]
References
- ^ From Fringe to Flying Circus - 'Celebrating a Unique Generation of Comedy 1960-1980' - Roger Wilmut, Eyre Methuen Ltd, 1980.
- ^ Footlights! - 'A Hundred Years of Cambridge Comedy' - Robert Hewison, Methuen London Ltd, 1983.
External links
- The Goodies - BBC Guide to Comedy
- The Official Goodies Rule - OK! Fan Club Website
- The Goodies - HumourLinks
- Goodies! Goodie Goodie Yum Yum!
- The Goodies - Cricklewood Office
- The Goodies at IMDb
- The Goodies - Trash Fiction website
- The Goodies - Nostalgia Central
- The Goodies - British TV Comedy
- The Goodies - BeebFun
- The Goodies DVD - information and review
- ISIHAC interviews - with Tim Brooke-Taylor, Graeme Garden, and Barry Cryer -
: (includes a discussion on whether there could be more Goodies episodes) - Australian broadcasts - a list of cuts made to the Australian ABC screenings
Tim Brooke-Taylor, Graeme Garden