This is too big to talk about in any kind of simple way. The Goodies - otherwise known as Tim Brooke-Taylor, Bill Oddie and Graeme Garden - were a phenomenon. For ten series, over twelve television seasons, they delighted, perplexed and amused in a thousand different ways. There were festival awards, hit singles, albums, books and appearances overseas, and yet paradoxially less than half of the series is available to watch now. The BBC didn't repeat them, and we can only reach a partial conclusion on just what they meant.
Having recently finished the last few available episodes, it's pretty safe to say that the Goodies deserved the attention they got. They changed television, along with 'The Muppet Show', and then television flipped back and they were forgetten. There are unprecedented things here. Can you think of any other long-running comedy shows written by AND starring the same people? Bill Oddie even helped out with the music for the whole run, adding a third level to the participation.
Episodes of the Goodies were typically made up a filmed 'silent movie' style segment, often described as physical comedy, with an original backing song, and a studio set situational comedy portion recorded on video. Sometimes it would be entirely one or the other, but the creativity was astounding. The show would often be mis-categorised as 'family entertainment', which defies the occasionally racy (relative speaking, for the BBC) content, and lead to much confusion. The underlying darkness of Garden and Oddie's writing could never really be completely called family friendly. However, the things that people remember the most are. This is the series which had the giant Dougal (from 'The Magic Roundabout') running riot at Chequers, the fantastic movie melange from 'The Movies' episode, the deep derangement of the ancient Lancastrian martial art of Ecky Thump, and Tim going crazy and doing an impression of a teapot when fully stressed.
While Garden and Oddie take the writing laurels, Tim Brooke-Taylor was definitely the star performer of the three. The man was fearless, and it seems such a shame that the rest of his career seems to have been spend in a series of conventional stage farces and guest appearances in utterly domestic sitcoms. I say this, with no real idea if it's completely true. There's a sequence in the episode 'Saturday Night Grease' when you wonder just why he's not better well known now, and of course then you remember it's because 'The Goodies' weren't repeated and were put in the dustbin of history. To be fair, that's true of a lot of shows from the 1970s, but here it somehow seems more vindictive.
Was 'The Goodies' good for its entire run? It's hard to say, on the limited evidence, but the defection to ITV for their final season definitely saw a confusion in what they were trying to do, and it can't really be considered on a par with the rest of what's available. You'll have to make up your own minds.
No, it really is too big a thing to talk about easily. Seventy-six episodes of completely diverse content can't be condensed down. There was slapstick, there was high verbal comedy, there was low-brow innuendo, and everything in between. Most of all, there was a boffin (Garden), a working-class hairy oik (Oddie), and the patriotic prig (Brooke-Taylor). They took turns in going barking mad to be the villain or idiot of the week, and it was all rather good. That was the show.
O.
No comments:
Post a Comment