The Return Of The Goodies

Retrospectives of old TV shows are generally disappointing.

Not that the clips show-up the differences between one’s memories and how it actually was, but because they tend to:

a) be barely, if at all, researched,
b) recite urban myths as fact
c) make general assumptions without checking
d) contain at least one massive omission
e) feature scripted interviews with celebrities who don’t even remember the show, and then claim it was rubbish
f) be just an opportunity to show lots of very very short clips, often cropped or squashed into widescreen.

Ignoring the widescreen issue, The Return of the Goodies defeated each and every one of these points. (I’m ignoring how the production-team repainted their blue LWT bike red to look like the BBC one – really!)


The programme went into depth about the show’s history, covered the forgotten LWT series, and predominantly interviewed the people who actually made the shows.

One of the greatest pleasures was seeing some of today’s comedians looking so shocked that the review tape they’d just watched (of Goodies Rule OK) was so good. As I mentioned in another post recently, The Goodies has aged extremely well, even if Bill does now find it hard to climb off the trandem.

Ironically, if there’s an area where this docu fails, it would be the specially-shot new footage of the The Goodies returning to their old office at the start. There are a few slow jokes that are almost in-character, but they’re not dressed as Graeme, Tim and Bill, they wear clip-on mics, and barely 2 minutes pass before they give up the pretence completely and chat to the audience.

I’d love to see these guys make a proper new series. You can whinge all you want about how they’re all old now, but they’re still doing comedy, and still funny too.

And I don’t see a single reason to doubt them.