The Good Life is a British sitcom, produced by BBC television. It went from 4 April 1975 to 10 June 1978 on BBC One and was written by Bob Larbey and John Esmonde. Opened with a midlife crisis faced by Tom Good, a 40-year-old plastic designer in London, it tells of the excitement and misery that he and his Barbara wife experienced as they tried to escape from modern commercial life by "being completely independent" in a house in Surbiton. In 2004, he was ranked 9th on the Best British Sitcom. In the United States, aired on various PBS stations under the title Good Neighbors .
Video The Good Life (1975 TV series)
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The Good Life was written by John Esmonde and Bob Larbey for Richard Briers, the only high profile member previously founded. Larbey and Esmonde were inspired by Larbey who achieved his 40th birthday, which for them is a significant milestone in most people's lives. Their storyline has a Goods decision to pursue independence that goes against the habits of Leadbetters, who live next door. Conflicts between neighbors who are offset by increasingly intimate friendships create comic tension as the friendship is tried to the limit.
Peter Bowles initially plays a role to play the role of Jerry, but is not available. She then starred Penelope Keith at To the Manor Born . Hannah Gordon is considered for Barbara's role but ruled out, having recently played the same role on BBC sitcom My Wife Next Door. Esmonde and Larbey chose Felicity Kendal and Penelope Keith after seeing them on stage together in The Norman Conquests. The filming location is on the outskirts of Northwood, North London, although the series is held in Surbiton, southwest London. The producers searched extensively for a pair of suitable houses, eventually meeting Kewferry Road, Northwood (Google street view [1], Leadbetters' house on the left). Land of Goods home is returned to its original state after filming each series inserts and all cattle removed at the end of the shoot every day.
Maps The Good Life (1975 TV series)
Cast
- Richard Briers - Tom Good
- Felicity Kendal - Barbara Good
- Penelope Keith - Margo Leadbetter (nÃÆ' Â © e Sturgess)
- Paul Eddington - Jeremy "Jerry" Leadbetter
- Reginald Marsh - Andrew/Sir
- Moyra Fraser - Felicity, wife of Sir (series 1)
Plot
On his 40th birthday, Tom Good could no longer take his job seriously and handed over a job as a draftsman for a company that made plastic toys for breakfast cereal packages. Their home was paid so that he and his wife Barbara adopted a sustainable, simple and independent lifestyle while living in their home on The Avenue, Surbiton. They turn their front gardens and rear into empty land, planting soft fruits and vegetables. They introduced chickens, pigs (Pinky and Perky), a goat (Geraldine) and a rooster (Lenin). They generate their own electricity, use methane from animal waste, and try to make their own clothes. They sell or trade surplus crops for basic needs that they can not make themselves. They cut their monetary requirements to a minimum with various successes.
Their actions scare their friendly but conventional neighbors, Margo and Jerry Leadbetter. Margo and Jerry are meant to be minor characters, but their relationship with each other and the Goods becomes an important element. Under the influence of the 'Barang' artificial wine, called the "burgundy peapod" (the power of a joke), their mutual attraction to each other becomes clear. Both couples had no children.
Character
Tom Good
Tom's career was as a draftsman, a job he did not like much about. He feels his life is meaningless, nothing more than work and consumption. Being self-reliant is hers , but Barbara, having expressed her concern, supports her. Tom is determined to be successful in self-reliance, and mostly cheerful about his new lifestyle. Tom is stubborn and stubborn, often annoying or annoying Barbara. On several occasions that he was pessimistic, Barbara became optimistic.
Barbara Good
Barbara is a normal middle-class housewife when the series begins. While he sometimes becomes weak under the determined and dominant nature of Tom, his sharp tongue puts him on the same footing. He is the heart of the company, while Tom's engineering brain designs and builds what they need. He longed for luxury but his own determination to succeed, with Tom's persuasion, kept him going.
Jerry Leadbetter
Jerry works for JJM, joining on the same day as Tom. (In addition, Jerry and Tom know each other for at least two years before they work for JJM.) With his own account, Jerry has become a senior manager through cunning and self-promotion rather than talent - he tells Tom directly that he has only 10 % talent Tom. As the series progresses, he moves in close proximity to the managing director's work. Jerry was convinced that the business alone would fail and on several occasions begged Tom to return. However, he grew to appreciate the character he had taken for Tom to leave the system. He is supervised at home but has the power to make his case.
Margo Leadbetter
Margo can not understand his neighbor's lifestyle, but their friendship is important to him. As a child, Margo Andrew and Felicity
Andrew, "Andy" or "Sir", is the managing director of JJM. He pretended not to know of Tom's existence ("Mr. Ummm of the Fourth Floor"), but once Tom left, Andy became desperate to bring Tom back. His wife, Felicity, is more relaxed. He is one of the few characters to support Tom and Barbara and believes trying to independently have been interesting. He said, "I wanted to do something interesting when I was younger, and then I met Andrew and that was the end of it." They have one son, invisible, called Martin. Andrew calls Tom and Barbara "Tim and Fatima", making up that he does not remember their names. However, in the episode "Anniversary", he admits that he always knows their names but pretends to forget - "an old executive tactic to get people harmed." Andrew appeared alone after the 1st series without further reference to Felicity.
Invisible characters
Some characters are mentioned but not visible. Margo is at loggerheads with Miss Dollie Mountshaft, the main light of the music community dictator. Excess Mrs. Dooms-Paterson is the same acquaintance of dictatorship and fellow member of Pony Club. Mr. and Mrs. Pearson, gardeners and housekeeper Leadbetters, mentioned in several episodes.
Episode
The Good Life aired for four series and two specials from April 4, 1975 to June 10, 1978. The final episode, "When I'm Sixty-Five", is the Royal Command Performance up front. The Queen, Duke of Edinburgh and senior management of the BBC. The cast and crew were presented to Queen and Prince Philip after the recording. The episode was originally broadcast in a 45 minute slot with footage on both sides of a 30 minute episode showing the Royal Party in and out.
Novelisations
Two novels from The Good Life were written, both by John Esmonde and Bob Larbey. The first, just titled The Good Life was published in 1976 by Penguin Books, and it was the first series novelization. The second book, titled More of The Good Life , was published in 1977 also by Penguin, and featured three episodes of two series and four episodes of series three.
Other countries
In the United States The Good Life has been titled Good Neighbors, to avoid confusion with a brief American sitcom of the same name, and shown by most PBS stations around the country starting in the early 1980s. In the late 1980s, it was rarely seen but returned to PBS stations after the release of select episodes on VHS by CBS/Video Fox in 1998.
The series also airs in Australia on ABCTV and in Canada on CBC with its original name. The series is also seen in South Africa, Rhodesia, New Zealand and many other Commonwealth countries as well as Belgium and the Netherlands. After Good Life
After the success of The Good Life, four lesser-known cast members were given their own "vehicle" commissioned by Comedy Head and producer John Good Davies. Penelope Keith starred alongside Peter Bowles on To the Manor Born , which airs a year after The Good Life ends. Paul Eddington joins Nigel Hawthorne and Derek Fowlds in Yes Minister and the sequel Ya Prime Minister . Felicity Kendal, who has become a sex symbol with her tomboyish character, complete with wellington boots, went on to join Elspet Gray in Solo and Jane Asher at The Mistress. Richard Briers then starred alongside Penelope Wilton and Peter Egan on the popular sitcom Ever Decreasing Circles. In 1992, Felicity Kendal and Paul Eddington reunited in the Channel Four adaptation of Mary Wesley's The Camomile Lawn .
In 2003, the BBC broadcast a mockumentary entitled Life Beyond the Box: Margo Leadbetter, describing Margo's life since the series finished, even though the original actor only appeared in the archive recordings. In 2007, Briers and Kendal reunited on the ITV1 series That's What I Called Television in a mock-up from the Kitchen Goods.
In popular culture
The Good Life feature in The Young Ones episode titled "Sick" in which Vyvyan (played by Adrian Edmondson) tore the title page after the first ten seconds of credit opening of the event while criticizing , said: "It's very bloody good! Felicity 'Treacle' Kendal and Richard 'Sugar-Flavored Snot' Briers! They are just some reactionary stereotypes, justifying the myth that everyone in Britain is a fun eccentric class and I hate them!"
Giles Coren and Sue Perkins joined for the 6 episode series Giles and Sue Live the Good Life, broadcast to celebrate the 35th anniversary of the original series, where they re-create the conditions by which two city dwellers try to adjust the life of the country, in situations such as raising their own barn animals, creating their own Christmas decorations, and knitting their own clothes.
The growth of the concept of hobby agriculture has been attributed to the success of TV shows like The Good Life .
Release home video
A full suite of The Good Life is available in the US (Region 1) under the title Good Neighbors . Series 1 - 3 was released as a box set in 2005; Series 4 was released in 2006 and included the Royal Command Performance.
UK DVD Release (Region 2) first removes two episodes (first episode of series 1 and one from series 3). [2], The four complete series have been re-released as a whole on March 29, May 24, July 19 and September 20, 2010, the full boxset has also been re-released.
These four series have been released as a whole in Australia (Region 4), though in NTSC format rather than the typical PAL format in Australia. The series 4 release (on two DVDs) also contains interviews with Richard Briers as well as the Royal Command Performance episode.
References
External links
- Good Life on BBC Online
- Good Life on IMDb
- The Good Life at the British Comedy Guide
- Good Life on Screenonline BFI
- Opening the Title in the BBC Rhyme
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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