The Goodies Volume Two - The Memorable TV DVD Review

SO IS IT ANY GOOD?

The Goodies have often been seen as a poor man’s Monty Python and with a humour level aimed roughly at teenage boys, now whilst that is a little unfair it is fair to say that their family Saturday teatime slot meant that they were never going to push the boundaries of satire like their Oxbridge counterparts but what they do excel at is pastiching popular culture and that is here in spades. These 8 episodes which run from first series (1970) to last (1977) are at their best when they are poking fun at movies (Bunfight at the OK Tearooms) or TV (Come Dancing) and Music (the punk phenomenon is explored in 1977’s Punk Business) and they are pretty funny, the interplay between the Goodies themselves is top notch too, the fake sitcom set up of the three of them sharing an apartment allows all their little quirks (especially Tim’s) come through, Tim is a Royalist pedant, Bill a layabout hippie and Graeme has the air of an absent minded professor. If anything the trio tend to rely too much on slapstick for the laughs and much of the humour is

visual which is surprising considering they are part of that great sixties and seventies comedy pantheon of talent that came out of Oxford and Cambridge during the 1960’s and who seemed to be blessed with genius when it came to verbal comedy but maybe the Goodies were offering themselves as an antidote to all that wordplay.

A major major plus of these shows too is the groovy music that was pretty much all written by Oddie, besides the corking theme tune his little interludes punctuate much of the action, if you remember the Goodies growing up then this is the perfect nostalgia blast and if you haven’t seen the show before then you should do so immediately, a great example of 1970’s British comedy and still entertaining in it’s own right.

ANY SPECIAL FEATURES?

The extras consist of a trio of amusing and anecdote filled audio commentaries (on movies, south Africa and the end) and three short segments first up is The Goodies Travelling Instant Five-Minute Christmas, this is pretty much a silent movie taken from the BBC’s annual Christmas Night of the Stars shindig, this one from 25 December 1972 (I’ve long wanted to see footage from some of these With The Stars productions, they contained the cream of all the TV shows in specially written 5 and 10 minute segments); Next is a short clip from Crackerjack (the popular Friday afternoon children’s entertainment show) broadcast 1 December 1978, this clip features the boys singing an amusing ditty called A Man’s Best Friend Is His Duck; Finally we have another silent movie (called Gymnasium and featuring the boys messing around in the Gym) that was originally seen 27 February 1972 as part of Engelbert With The Young Generation series of light entertainment shows.

TRIVIA ?

The Goodies had five big hits through out the seventies including the legendary Funky Gibbon.