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19 reviews in total

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14 out of 15 people found the following review useful:
Classic English comedy from the 1970s!, 8 November 2001
Author: INFOFREAKO from Perth, Australia

'The Goodies' were one of the things that made growing up in the Seventies so much fun! This show may be dated fashion- and special effects-wise, but the humour is still as original and hilarious as ever.

Oddie, Garden and Brooke-Taylor shared a similar background and history to most of the Monty Python team. They also began as comedians while studying at University and various combination of Goodies and Pythons performed and wrote together for many television and radio comedies throughout the Sixties. Not long after Monty Python debuted on TV in 1969 The Goodies followed with their own series, which ended up lasting much longer. The Pythons aimed at adults, The Goodies at children, but for all their surface differences they shared a similar surreal Goons inspired wit, with an emphasis on wonderfully inventive sight gags.

Unlike Python, the show wasn't a sketch comedy. The basic premise was that out heroes would do anything, anywhere, anytime, which meant that they got into increasingly bizarre situations, which were often just an excuse for silly goings on and funny stuff. And the show WAS funny! Even today the best episodes stand up, and 'Kitten Kong', the unforgettable episode about a giant kitten terrorizing a city, must surely rank as one of THE highlights of television comedy, any decade!

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10 out of 11 people found the following review useful:
One of the best comedy series from the UK, 18 July 2002
Author: Ron Bingham from Melbourne, Australia

The Goodies were Tim, Bill and Graeme (character names the same as their real names). The shows ran from 1970 to 1980 and the plot usually involved one of the three going mad in some way and the other two attempting to stop him. In the early series there was a guest star who won the honour of being the baddie for the week, until the Goodies realised that the baddie was usually the best part to play!

The episodes were written by the trio and all stunts were performed by them as well. Their style was part slapstick and part dialogue driven comedy. Of the 75 or so episodes there are only a handful that do not stand the test of time (or taste, although the team have apologised for some of the incidental racism in the jokes which, however was standard for the time).

Some of the best episodes include The Giant Kitten (where a kitten is fed growth mixture, ends up two stories tall and eating London, and the Goodies have to don mouse suits to get close enough to inject the antidote), Pirate Radio (where the team start a pirate radio station, then pirate post office and Graeme attempts to take over the world), Goodies at the OK Tearooms (a western set in Cornwall where they mine for cream and scones, ending in a gunfight with sauce bottles) and The End (entire episode set in a room encased in a concrete block over a span of 100 years, with brilliant script and forced on them as they had used their series budget up).

The team had their start at Cambridge and Oxford with the boys from Month Python. They wrote a number of TV shows with the python lads and were good friends. The Goodies also starred in a radio series called I'm sorry, I'll Read That Again with John Cleese and some episodes written by Eric Idle which lasted for six years(1965-1971,1973). Monty Python's Flying Circus started about six months before the Goodies.

The Goodies was a classic TV series which is still funny and should be re-released on DVD ASAP.

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9 out of 10 people found the following review useful:
The Funkiest Gibbons In Town!, 25 February 2003
Author: Roisin Moriarty (roisin_moriarty@yahoo.co.uk) from Ireland

It's funny how the controller of BBC2 can allow repeats of "The Good Life" and "Fresh Prince Of Bel Air" (to name but two admittedly excellent comedies) to be shown over and over but her reasoning for not repeating "The Goodies" is that she doesn't want to air too many repeats. But the good, nay utterly brilliant, news is that Messrs Brooke-Taylor, Garden and Oddie themselves have bought the rights to their classic show and plan on releasing it on DVD and video. At this time it's unknown whether they'll publish the whole lot with loads of fabulous DVD extras (a commentary from the trio would be wonderful) but the fact that us Goodies fans can finally get to see our wacky heroes any time we like is reason for the most joyous of celebrations.

The jokes that sailed too close to the wind and the occasional mis-fired episode have already been discussed here but it still remains that these were some of the funniest guys of the Seventies (and beyond) and deserve a good deal more recognition than they currently enjoy. "Kitten Kong" and "Bunfight at the OK Tearooms" are no doubt their best known sketches but their take on "Bright Eyes" was hilarious and their flat-capped Yorkshiremen knocking nine bells out of each other with blackpuddings were side-splitting (unless you're from Yorkshire and therefore fed up to the back teeth with that kind of "eckie-thoomp" stereotype).

It's about time we finally got to see The Goodies on DVD but while we wait I can highly recommend that you listen to the BBC Radio 4 "quiz" show "I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue" which features both Graeme and Tim.

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6 out of 7 people found the following review useful:
"I spy with my little eye...", 23 January 2003
Author: bibimimi from LV, NV

I would not miss these guys along with Python when I was in high school, and I'm sure it warped me. I recall a jockey's uprising, no longer able to withstand the indignities of "Apart-Height". There was a couple of lucky scone miners who got squirted in the face when they hit a vein of strawberry jam. And of course, the longest game of 'I Spy' on record with only one piece of furniture in the room. Out of context, yeah, sounds daft, kinda like quotes from "The Aqua Teen Hunger Force".

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7 out of 9 people found the following review useful:
More surreal than Monty Python, 26 October 2003
Author: Phil Davison from Herts, United Kingdom

The Goodies and Monty Python both came out of the radio programme "I'm Sorry I'll Read That Again". Python was surreal and got well known for it. "The Goodies" was more consistently surreal and obviously missed the boat because of it. Personally I think "The Goodies" was more consistently funny than Python and, for the most part, as surreal (the chase at the end of "Saturday Night Grease" should be enough to confirm that!) or more so. I just wish that they were as popular so that more programmes were available on DVD! The "card" game in "The Bun Fight At The OK Tea Rooms" is enough to make people agree with that!

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9 out of 13 people found the following review useful:
The special effects may be dated, but the humour certainly isn't!, 2 August 2001
Author: TC Raymond from England

As the thirtieth anniversary of the Goodies loomed in the year 2000, there were rumours of a special 'Goodies night' on BBC2 to celebrate the wonderfully anarchic (and hugely influential) surreal humour of this timeless comedy team. Sadly, however, the station's controller spiked the idea, leaving us hardcore Goodies fans with nothing but six episodes on BBC videotapes, memories and those brilliantly camp novelty records the trio released all those years ago. Yes, the special effects have dated. Yes, they were prone to dodgy sexist / borderline racist gags. Yes, they wore flares, union jack waistcoats and star tanktops. But televison was a better, friendlier and crazier place for having known Bill, Tim and Graeme. And it's a sad man who doesn't laugh at Michael Aspel getting stomped by that giant kitten!

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5 out of 6 people found the following review useful:
One of the forgotten classics of British Comedy, 30 June 1999
Author: Alan Olsen (alan@clueserver.org) from Portland, Oregon

The Goodies are a very funny British comedy group that grew out of a radio show called "I'm Sorry I'll Read That Again" (sometimes called "The Wonder Show".) The radio series also had John Cleese and a few others.

The writing for this group is always very sharp and filled with unexpected and dreadful puns.

If you can find a copy of this, rent, buy or borrow it! (That goes for any of their other movies.)

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3 out of 3 people found the following review useful:
Series One: It's whatever turns you on..., 12 April 2007

Author: The_Movie_Cat from England

*** This review may contain spoilers ***

... or so went the lesser-remembered early version of the theme tune. It's easily forgotten that The Goodies, running for twelve years, was spawned out of the tail end of the 60s. This goes from the sneaky drug references (just check out the initials of Bill's Lemon Sherbet Dip which gives him all the hallucinations) and the musical numbers by Oddie which seem to pass them over as wannabe Monkees. The first credit sequence sees them leaping in the air like some kind of carefree, youthful troupe, which of course The Goodies never really were. Corduroy and wild abandon never really sat well together, and Graeme Garden even confesses that he sprained himself jumping into the air. But looking back over the seven episodes of the first series from 1970, it's still difficult to answer the all-important question: are they still funny anymore? The initial signs weren't good. Seeing the trio on an old Top of the Pops repeat singing The Funky Gibbon was a painful realisation that three middle class (well, except for Bill) and practically middle-aged men dancing around and mugging hasn't followed us into the new century very comfortably. Dating, of course, is not the fault of the programme, which was made with the intention of airing to a 1970-1982 audience, not to be thrown into the harsh light of DVD in the 21st century. Yet it's strange how one decade's subversion is another's mainstream, and while at the time it was cutting edge and quite political, seen in 2007 its surrealism is very much end of the pier, while even the skits on the Royal Family are quaint in a modern context.

Naturally, being a product of the 70s, there's much to debate in terms of content. There's a "poof" or "fairy" joke in two of the first series episodes, topless women in three of them, and while blackface doesn't feature here, it was a semi-regular Goodies staple, even being used as late on as the 1981 Christmas special. Heritage is a question among the series. For a long time the stars touted themselves (legitimately) as peers of Monty Python, unfairly regarded as a "kid's show". Such things are not helped by their merchandising ventures, such as my dog-eared copy of The Goodies 1974 annual. Brought out by World, traditionally the makers of children's annuals, it's helped by the interest taken by the Goodies themselves, and there are one or two racy jokes in there, such as the tribal wife named Gentilia. But to allow what is a glorified kid's book (complete with five comic strips) to enter Christmas stocking and then complain about not being taken seriously is a little rich.

The heritage extends further back, with slapstick indebted to both the golden age of cartoons (a series a post-Goodie Tim would present, and directly referenced in Kitten Kong, and more) plus silent comedy, Tim's cries a blatant crib from Stan Laurel. Bringing this forward, one suggestion to give the series latter-day credibility is that its natural offspring was The Young Ones. Watching the staid opening episode might not immediately bring this to mind, but by the time we reach March 1975 and Graeme's eating a foghorn while they strike oil and launch a lighthouse into space, you can see where the claims are coming from. By the time The Goodies left our screens (sacked by a commercial channel who didn't really know what to do with them once they had them) it was the same year Rik, Vyvyan and Neil were due to take their place back on BBC2. That the year before saw the aforementioned final "blackface" incident perhaps indicates the real gulf between them and the "alternate" regime in terms of idealogy.

The 1970 series, then, while not being laugh-out-loud hilarious, is quite charming in its staid way. Sure, there are plenty of counterculture jokes, some bare boobs and Bill's bare backside, but a series that has an episode with Tim pretending to be a woman is a very quaint, almost music hall throwback. The decision to mimic television adverts in the middle of all the episodes is less Python style satire, more the sort of stuff that Benny Hill had been doing since the 1950s. (Having said this, the advert for "Razz" is probably the funniest part of the first series). In fact, "Caught In The Act" is arguably the most dated episode of the lot, one that predicts the rise of women's clubs – complete with male strippers – but has bawdy sexism, rear nude women and randy housewives as part of its lexicon. In referring back to The Young Ones, then having the third episode centred around police brutality is commendable, though curiously lacking in real edge to a modern audience. By some way the best episode of the first series, "The Greenies" (AKA "Army Games") sees not only a satire of the British military, but also an early dig at Apartheid and swipes at vivisection. The final episode of the first series, "Radio Goodies", is interesting in that Graeme becomes the "bad guy" for the episode, a narrative tool that they would go on to employ more frequently throughout future episodes.

Overall, while the 1970 episodes ARE dated, almost quaint, and linear compared to what came after, the tighter scripts and more verbal based nature means they stand up fairly well nearly four decades later. Not only that, but while the acting may have improved over time, there's a freshness and energy that the last couple of series may have lacked. Oh, one last thing... isn't it weird seeing Bill without a beard?

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4 out of 5 people found the following review useful:
One of the funniest shows, 27 July 2001
Author: oiyou from London, England

One of the funniest UK comedy shows. The episode "Bunfight at the OK Tearooms" features the best western saloon bar poker game scene ever filmed (using toast for cards and biscuits as chips then pies and cakes and finally a three-tier wedding cake as the stakes got higher). The poker game is played entirely to piano music with no dialogue. The celebrity safari park one was great too. Especially when they released Tony Blackburn back into the wild and someone shot him. The show was derived from the radio show I'm Sorry I'll Read That Again which was also part of Monty Python's ancestry featuring John Cleese in the cast and Eric Idle and Graham Chapman among the writers.

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4 out of 5 people found the following review useful:
An all-time classic show, 7 March 2001
Author: Emma (bananamanfan@hotmail.com) from Melbourne, Australia

This is one of my favourite TV shows, it's so funny! OK, occasionally they may have had a dud episode, like the one with them dressed as toothpaste tubes and bouncing around the world for charity, but most episodes are absolutely hilarious, like 'The End' or 'Earthanasia'. Graeme Garden, Bill Oddie and Tim Brooke-Taylor are funny and if you can get a chance to watch the show, don't miss it.

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