The Goodies - 8 Delicious Episodes

While most everybody I knew as a little ’un back in the ‘70s looked forward to Doctor Who every night after school, I cared little for those shonky sets and rasping robots, in favour of three rather silly blokes known as The Goodies. I guess I still got my fill of shonky sets then.

I'm a teapot!

And silliness was the key to the show’s success for so many. With a conveniently broad job specification of “we do anything, anytime�, the stage was set for The Goodies to do, erm, anything, anytime – so one week they could be saving the world from a plague of Rolf Harris’, the next they could be saving it from giant, rampaging puppets, the next rescuing us from the evil U.S. government’s nasty nerve gas (even if it was liquid!) It could even be said that they saved the world – a lot.

A lemon sherbet trip...

While the English release was more appropriately entitled …At Last, rather than being lamely retitled for Australia as 8 Delicious Episodes (not the first time they’ve been played with in this country by any means), this two-disc set features, well, eight episodes of The Goodies, spanning the decade from 1970 to 1980 – and everything else the U.K. was given. What we get is a reasonably well selected cross section of mostly classic episodes, delivering fabulous examples of just what made these three ninnies so popular – lots of big props, improbable situations, more big props, extreme silliness, some fabulous cheesy effects, big props, nods to everything from classic film to politics, big props, some fabulous commercial spoofs and most importantly some really solid writing which worked on two levels – there’s lots of daftness for kids, and quite a bit for the adults to snicker at (as well as quite a bit the ABC nipped and tucked it would seem, I certainly don’t remember seeing any boobs back then!)

Many will find the memories flooding back already, here’s more of what’s in store…

Tower of London - Where it all started, with our trio hired to get to the bottom of who’s stealing the beefeaters’ beef and uncovering a conspiracy of royal proportions.

Gender Education - The Goodies are hired to make an S-E-* education film for the BBC that’s deemed to rude by prissy Desiree Carthorse, subsequently Bill gets a taste for producing video nasties.

Kitten Kong - Seeing treating loony animals as a viable career option, The Goodies end up out of their depth when Graeme’s growth food makes ickle-bitsy, teeny-weeny kitten Twinkle not quite so little.

The Goodies and the Beanstalk - It’s hard times in Cricklewood as our threesome find themselves homeless and destitute. Having flogged the bike for a tin of beans, a world-conquering beanstalk is unleashed, leading to a “giant� and his trove of golden eggs.

ECKY THUMP!

Kung Fu Kapers - While Graeme and Tim learn kung fu, Bill is happy with his abilities in t’ great Lancastrian art of Ecky Thump – which soon becomes t’ biggest thing since chip butties and t’ instigator for political ideals.

Lighthouse Keeping Loonies - Five years in an overgrown lamppost known as the Jolly Rock is sure to lead to an all round bad time…

Earthanasia - It’s Christmas Eve and as the leaders have decided there’s no hope for it, the world is set to end at midnight, which is a bit of a blow. The Goodies deal with their inner feelings about as well as blokes usually do.

Saturday Night Grease - Timbo is caught up in the fever, with a touch of Livvy luv and all. Sadly, however, he can’t dance. Bill opens his own club and challenges the nation’s fear of mixed dancing.

Handed over to a very skilled restoration team, while not being perfect – which would be an absolutely ridiculous expectation for an aged television series - The Goodies on DVD is still quite the visual revelation. It’s a long way to think back to, however I seem to recall the show looking like it had done a few rounds with a sheet of sandpaper way back when – save for some grain and the odd speckle, however, now things look quite amazing.

The baddies and the goodies - an example of what's been achieved via restoration.

Getting ahead of ourselves for a moment, the extras inclusion of a look at the digital restoration these episodes underwent indicates just what bad shape they were actually in. Sparkling, massive amounts of dirt, video dropouts, faded colour and wobbles aplenty were omnipresent, when now, save for that grain and odd speckle, things are remarkably rock solid. Colour has been brought back to glorious life through all the episodes, while other things tend to vary a little over the episodes featured from throughout a span of ten years. Tower of London, the earliest episode, is probably worst hit, however more due to effects of the time rather than time itself – the ‘Rent-a-View Picture Window’ and its blue screen-ness causing all manner of aliasing. There’s a bit of video flaring in Lighthouse Keeping Loonies around candles and such, and the odd obvious example of blue screens here and there in other episodes, however these guys were pioneering use of the medium, so there were sure to be a few glitches – most of which are only obvious due to the clarity and detail DVD brings us all these years later. Layer changes are well placed, skating by on the first disc at the end of a commercial break, and actually not even noticed on the second disc.

In all, this is The Goodies looking better than anybody will have seen before – and how could we ask for more?

A barbershop trio?

While near miracles have been conjured forth with the video, it seems less was possible with the audio. Although obvious wonders have been achieved – especially in the near complete absence of hiss or any other such aural gremlins – the original mono source, now pumped through Dolby Digital stereo, does exhibit quite a bit of distortion in earlier episodes, most notably on the often infuriating laugh tracks. Most importantly the dialogue comes through clear and well synched-up (which is a good thing as the subtitles promised on the disc’s packaging are nowhere to be found), and as much as it would be nice for some of Michael Gibbs and Bill Oddie’s fabulous little ditties to be booming out rather than just kind of hanging around, you can’t help but thinking little if anything more could have been done to improve things.

Despite rather unexciting menus on both discs, there is much in the way of excitement to be found in the extras on offer. But first, mention must be made of the message that comes up when popping the disc in the player – advice that we should adjust the tracking control on our video recorders in the case of picture interference. Is it a booboo or a joke? It’s hard to be sure…

Utilising my keenly honed powers of reasoning and deduction, I have determined that it is, indeed, a radio...

Anyway, on to more important stuff. The first disc offers up a fabulous treasure trove of things for fans to rummage through, most notably audio commentaries recorded recently by The Goodies for Kitten Kong and The Goodies and the Beanstalk. To be honest they do start off sounding a little uncertain, with many gaps and a lot of time spent obviously just recalling things after such a time away from their creation. But they eventually wind up to speed, with anecdotes ranging from censorship information to how effects were achieved, along with lots of trivia, such as the fact that Tim Brooke-Taylor was the original Heinz baked beans kid, making those old “Heanz Meanz Beanz� parody ads (of which sadly none are included) make just that little bit more sense. The only problem with these commentaries is the relative levels – the shows’ dialogue is often too loud, making it hard to concentrate on what our commentators are saying.

Also on disc one is a storyboard for Beanstalk, a massive series of very rough sketches with annotations that includes many an un-shot or un-included scene. We are also given the welcome option of an alternate audio track for this episode with the laughter removed (for the most part at least). Rounding out this little platter is the digital restoration featurette referred to above. Running for 4:05, it delivers many a before and after example using two of the show’s opening sequences from through the years, complete with some bonus Goodies commentary at times.

The second disc isn’t quite as jam-packed with, erm, goodies, however the audio commentary for Lighthouse Keeping Loonies is easily the best one in the set. Seemingly much more at ease with the process by this time, the three have much in the way of behind the scenes stuff to impart, from their storyboarding process to how they wrote, more effects information, talk of unions at the time and even a go at Australia for the frequent editing carried out by the ABC. What sounds incredibly exciting - outtakes - is a little disappointing, being only two minutes of a few giggle fits and flubs from two scenes. Rounding out the official bonuses is some surviving film footage (8:27) from Broaden Your Mind, a programme featuring the three in various roles (Bill in a writing capacity) which pre-dated The Goodies.

For the more intrepid, there are a couple of hidden things on the second disc – curiously the one which uses little black puddings to get around the menus rather than eggs like disc one. There are two brief things to be found – you can always check out our googies section if you can’t discover them yourself.

While some of the references may have dated a tad, good comedy never goes out of style, and The Goodies blessed us with an absolute swag of the stuff. If you still have fond memories of these three silly buggers jumping all over your screen then you’ll find 8 Delicious Episodes a sheer treat. The only problem is it’s brought memories flooding back of all those other classic episodes – more goody goody yum yum now Auntie, please!