Back in the 197os or thereabouts, WGBH, Channel 2 in Boston imported Monty Python's Flying Circus. More British humor then appeared: The Good Life (Good Neighbors to we in the States), To the Manor Born, others of that ilk. We also were gifted with that particularly British SF phenomenon, Doctor Who, the great Dave Allen and the raunchy Benny Hill--and a trio of cartoonish live-action do-gooders whose lives were peppered with sight gags and peculiarities like giant pussycats. The trio, made up of Tim Brooke-Taylor, Graeme Garden, and Bill Oddie, were The Goodies.

The loose--very loose--premise of the series was as follows:

Tim: And we are... er... going... to... do good... to people.
Graeme & Bill: How wet!

The motto of the Goodies was "we do anything, anytime." And certainly they did.

This inspired silliness followed Doctor Who on WGBH's sister station WGBX and I got hooked on it. (I also must admit I thought Tim Brooke-Taylor was cute...) So the last time I made an order from Amazon.co.uk, I picked up The Goodies, At Last, an eight-episode sampler of Goodie nuttiness. (Thank the Lord for region hacks on DVD players...)

I watched the first two eps last night. The DVD has been deliciously [pun intended] restored--the extras include a comparison between the old dust-flecked, color faded prints and the new DVD copies--and we can see the guys in all their glory. Do I find it as funny as I did at age 20? Well, maybe not quite, but I did find myself giggling a lot during the Tower of London episode. The episodes are chock-full of the slapstick stuff my Dad wouldn't allow me to watch as a kid (no Soupy Sales, Pinky Lee, or Three Stooges for me): pratfalls, overcranks, silly jokes, absurd costumes--to catch Twinkle, the kitten who grows to enormous size due to Graeme's growth formula, for instance, the guys dress up like mice--and the Goodies' own "commercials" inserted into the eps at the halfway point, which largely seem to be humor involving gay men in the vein of Mr. Humphries on Are You Being Served? No thinking is involved, which on weeknights is a relief.

So, yeah, sometimes you can go home again, even if a spiffy new paint job doesn't always completely hide the aging timbers. Like with the Doctor, it's always fun to time travel to the past. I'm looking forward to the rest, especially the infamous "Ecky Thump" episode (apparently a British gentleman laughed himself to death during this outing).

Here: Have some more goodies...uh, Goodies:

BBC's Goodies Page

Goodies Mini-FAQ

Humorlink's Goodies Page

Fact Index's Goodies Page

----------------------------------------------------------------
. . . . . noted and logged by Linda at 10:13:00 AM

Comments: Post a Comment