The Goodies
The Goodies were a trio of British comedians: Tim Brooke-Taylor, Graeme Garden and Bill Oddie. The trio created, wrote for and performed in their eponymous television comedy show from 1970 until 1982, combining sketches and situation comedy.
Beginnings
The three actors met each other while undergraduates at the University of Cambridge, where Brooke-Taylor was a law student, Garden was studying medicine and Oddie was reading English. Their contemporaries included Graham Chapman, John Cleese and Eric Idle, who later became members of Monty Python, and with whom they became close friends. Brooke-Taylor and Cleese studied together and swapped lecture notes, for they were both law students, but at different colleges within the university. All three Goodies became members of the Cambridge University Footlights Club, with Brooke-Taylor becoming president in 1963, and Garden succeeding him as president in 1964.In 1965, Eric Idle succeeded Garden as Footlights Club president. Idle had initially become aware of the Footlights when he auditioned for a "Smoking Concert" at Pembroke College in front of Brooke-Taylor and Oddie.
Career before ''The Goodies''
Brooke-Taylor, Garden and Oddie were cast members of the 1960s BBC radio comedy show I'm Sorry, I'll Read That Again, which also featured John Cleese, David Hatch and Jo Kendall, and lasted until 1973. I'm Sorry, I'll Read That Again resulted from the 1963 Cambridge University Footlights Club revue A Clump of Plinths. After having its title changed to Cambridge Circus, the revue went on to play in the West End in London, England, followed by a tour of New Zealand, then on Broadway in New York City.They also took part in various TV shows with other people, including Brooke-Taylor in At Last the 1948 Show. Brooke-Taylor also took part in Marty. In 1968 Brooke-Taylor appeared with Cleese, Michael Palin and Graham Chapman in How to Irritate People. Garden and Oddie took part in Twice a Fortnight, before Brooke-Taylor, Garden, and Oddie worked on the late-1960s TV show Broaden Your Mind.
''The Goodies'' television series
The original BBC television series ran from November 1970 to February 1980 on BBC 2, with 67 half-hour episodes and two forty-five-minute Christmas specials. The series was created by Tim Brooke-Taylor, Graeme Garden and Bill Oddie, and originally co-written by all three, with Oddie providing the music for the show. Later episodes were co-written by Garden and Oddie.It was one of the first shows in the UK to use chroma key and one of the first to use stop-motion techniques in a live action format. Other effects include hand editing for repeated movement, mainly used to make animals "talk" or "sing", and play speed effects as used in the episode "Kitten Kong". In the series, the threesome travelled on, and frequently fell off, a three-seater bicycle known to them as a 'trandem'.
In September 1978, the trio appeared in character in an episode of the BBC1 television game show Star Turn Challenge, presented by Bernard Cribbins, in which teams of celebrities competed in acting games. Their opponents were three members of the cast of The Liver Birds, Nerys Hughes, Elizabeth Estensen and Michael Angelis. They also presented the Christmas 1976 edition of Disney Time from the toy department of Selfridges store in London, broadcast on BBC1 on Boxing Day at 5.50 pm.
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, the Goodies signed a contract with London Weekend Television for ITV. However, after one half-hour Christmas special in 1981, and a six-part series in early 1982, the series was cancelled. In later interviews the cast suggest the reasons were mainly economic, and that a typical Goodies sketch was more expensive than it appeared.
DVD and VHS releases
Awards and nominations
"The Goodies" won the Silver Rose at the Festival Rose d'Or, held in Montreux, Switzerland, in 1972 for a special episode, based on the original 1971 Goodies' "Kitten Kong" episode, titled "Kitten Kong: Montreux '72 Edition". In the first episode of the next series, "The New Office", Tim Brooke-Taylor can be seen painting the trophy gold."The Goodies" was nominated for a BAFTA for Best Light Entertainment Programme in 1972, losing to The Benny Hill Show.
"The Goodies" won the Silver Rose in 1975 at the Festival Rose d'Or for their episode "The Movies".
"The Goodies" was nominated for a BAFTA for Best Light Entertainment Programme in 1976, losing to The Two Ronnies.
International releases and repeats of the TV series
Britain
Unlike many long-running BBC comedy series, The Goodies has not enjoyed extensive repeats on terrestrial television in the UK. In 1986, BBC2 broadcast the episode "Kitten Kong" during a week of programmes screened under the banner "TV-50", when the BBC celebrated 50 years of broadcasting. In the late 1980s the pan-European satellite-channel Super Channel broadcast a couple of episodes, and the 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 with Network Video 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. Series 9 was released on Region 2 as The Goodies – The Complete LWT Series on 26 March 2007 and a fourth volume The Goodies... At Last Back for More, Again was released on region 2 in 2010 as well as a DVD box set containing all four volumes to celebrate 40 years of The Goodies.
In 2004, an episode of the BBC documentary series Comedy Connections was devoted to the Goodies. During Christmas that year, Channel 5 repeated the classic 1973 episode "The Goodies and the Beanstalk". Christmas 2005 saw a 90-minute Goodies special, a documentary about the series, Return of the Goodies, broadcast on BBC Two.
Early in 2006, a single episode was broadcast on BBC Two. In February 2007, the 1982 LWT series was repeated on pay-TV channel Paramount 2.
In December 2010, BBC Two showed selected late-night repeats of the BBC series, which ran nightly from 23 to 30 December. This apparent gesture followed years of campaigning by The Goodies that the shows had not been repeated like other BBC shows such as Dad's Army, Only Fools and Horses and Some Mothers Do 'Ave 'Em. The episodes shown were: "Bunfight at the O.K. Tea Rooms" / "Earthanasia" / "The Goodies and the Beanstalk" / "Kitten Kong" / "Lighthouse Keeping Loonies" / "Saturday Night Grease" / "The Baddies" and "The Stone Age", although "Scoutrageous", "Kung Fu Kapers" and "Scotland" were originally billed as episodes 1, 2 and 7 of the repeat run. The episodes garnered good ratings given their time slot, and the first six episodes were taken from the BBC's own master tapes, rather than the digital remasters, the rights to which are currently owned by Network Video. "The Baddies" and "The Stone Age" have never been digitally remastered.
On Sunday 8 June 2014, during a 1970s weekend, BBC Two repeated the Montreux '72 Edition of "Kitten Kong" once again; however, this has been the only episode to be repeated twice, and no full series have been repeated since.
In September 2018, Network released a box set titled The Goodies: The Complete BBC Collection. This set contains every single episode from 1970-1980 and, as a bonus feature, a one-hour edit of the show "An Audience with the Goodies", hosted by Stewart Lee and filmed live at Leicester Square in June 2018.
In late September 2022 the TV channel 'That's TV' started showing the BBC episodes, one episode every day, starting with series one episode one on 26 September at 21.40. Series 2 started airing at 21.45 on 5 October. Series 3 started airing at 21:40 on 11 October. Series 4 started airing at 21:30 on 17 October. Series 5 started airing at 21:30 on 24 October. Series 6 started airing at 21:30 on 6 November. Some episodes are being aired in poor quality and/or black & White as the tapes were sadly wiped for reuse by the BBC in the 1970s. Although there is a message before each episode stating; 'This programme reflects the standards, language and attitudes of its time. Some viewers may find this content offensive', it seems that not all episodes are being aired - noticeably the 'Kitten Kong', 'Special Tax Edition' & 'The Goodies Rule – O.K.?' specials, but also series 2 episodes 'Pollution', 'The Lost Tribe', 'Come Dancing', 'Gender Education, 'Charity Bounce' & 'The Baddies', series 3 episode 'Superstar', series 4 episodes 'The Goodies and the Beanstalk' & 'The Race', series 5 episodes 'Scatty Safari' & 'South Africa' were not aired, with no notice or reason given.
Australia
In Australia, the series has had continued popularity. It was especially popular when it was repeated through the 1970s and 1980s by the ABC. As the show was typically broadcast in the 25-minute 6:00 pm children's timeslot, portions often had to be cut. The 1981-82 LWT series was played once on the Seven Network in the early 1980s. The ABC screened the BBC episodes again in the early 1990s, but skipped several stories due to either inappropriate material for a children's timeslot, or a lack of colour prints at the time. The BBC episodes were then heavily edited to allow time for commercials when repeated on Network Ten in the 1990s, before moving to the pay television channel UK.TV during the late 1990s and early 2000s, where they were screened in full. ABC2 ran re-runs of the series, beginning in 2010.Three of the Goodies DVDs are available in Australia under different titles to the UK releases: The Goodies: 8 Delicious Episodes, The Goodies: A Tasty Second Helping and The Goodies: The Final Episodes, respectively. The Goodies' DVDs are also available in a boxed set with a commemorative booklet. This collection contains the same 16 episodes as the original two DVD releases but with additional material such as commentaries on several episodes and the original scripts of some episodes in PDF format. Picture quality has been greatly improved using digital restoration techniques and the episode "Come Dancing", which was originally thought to only have survived as a black-and-white film recording, is presented in colour from a 625-line low-band broadcast standard PAL VT recording, made for training purposes, which has had the low-level colour boosted., and ''The Goodies – A Second Helping: 4 tasty serves''