The Goodies

The Goodies have a very simple history:

They were brilliant.

Anything else that I may have to say about them can only subtract from that.

When I was a kid, I loved their TV show. Despite all the visual comedy, I audio-taped it. When I was a teenager, and supposed to rebel against the things I’d loved as a child, reruns of The Goodies on ITV were still easily the best show of the week. And yes, I was still audio-taping them.

In my twenties I would get hold of old shows on VHS and still find them fantastic.

Now I’m 35 and, courtesy of Herschel's DVDs, I’ve spent the past couple of weeks watching 16 episodes again on DVD. (+ 1 they repeated last Christmas)


One episode - Kitten Kong (about a 100ft kitten terrorising London) - I’ve seen so many, many times now, that I expected to find it a bit old hat. Instead, I sat literally crying with laughter at it. My face was soaking. It was so funny it was beautiful.

Bun Fight At The OK Tearooms (about a power struggle over a clotted cream mine) is perfection itself.

Goodies And The Beanstalk (about… guess) was enthralling, more so on this viewing as I realised parts of it had been filmed just around the corner from my house!

They made about 70 of these shows, before the BBC decided to constructively axe it at the height of its popularity. And by height I don’t mean it had peaked. The Goodies was still soaring higher.

So much so that the Goodies themselves were immediately offered a 3-year deal to continue their masterpieces on ITV. Alas, only 7 shows later, despite their contract to the contrary, the show was rudely ripped off the airwaves again, by the same guy who would later move to the BBC and try to stop anyone ever seeing Doctor Who again – Michael Grade.


Despite its topicality, The Goodies has aged extremely well. Sure, in some of the early ones they’re trying to fill some time in the studio, but as soon as they stopped including a guest-star, they’ve tightened every script up to the funniest gag or plot-twist that they could come up with. It's no longer studio with film-inserts - it's whatever the heck their script says it is.

A few gags miss, but not many. The scene in Punky Business when Bill beats himself up in a tuxedo whilst crooning the whole of I’m In Love For The Very First Time really isn’t remotely funny, but it is utterly fascinating to watch. The Goodies had the self-assurance to go off on their own tangent regardless of whether anyone else would ‘get’ it. No-one's even allowed to do that now. Everything's got to be relevant.

I could go on and on about their great episodes, but I should temper it by mentioning one of their rare duds - Goodies Almost Live - which was just a series of musical numbers with no story. Can’t knock them for that though – what a fantastic average. It really was almost always brilliant.

In fact if there is a negative side to their legacy, it would have to be all the interviews they give today claiming how 'adult' these shows were. Sorry guys, but these DVDs prove you wrong.

We children of the 70s were more intelligent than you realised.


Buy the DVDs:
The Goodies … At Last
The Goodies … At Last A Second Helping
Boxed-set of both