Tim Brooke-Taylor, Graeme Garden and Bill Oddie's feast for the eyes and ears, totally undervalued by the BBC who haven't seen fit to repeat any of the eight series for almost twenty years. Usually only ever alluded to in the media when some lazy dick-suck journalist sticks 'Funky Gibbon' in a list of the worst singles of all time.
We'll leave our original piece up here for a while. But those of you who want a good hard look at The Goodies may wish to go straight to Bent Halo's Toothpick Companion
1.
Due to the stupid and unnecessary purge of the BBC archives in the 70s many original colour episodes of The Goodies are now lost. The archive has been replenished with episodes found in TV archives abroad but these are in monochrome (in the early 70s, several overseas broadcasting companies didn’t have colour technology and simply bought the shows on black and white film). These shows were luckily not overlooked by the satellite stations during the various repeat showings, except for 'Compromising Photos' (AKA 'The Playgirl Club') from the first series which has some sort of technical fault.
Two
compromising production photos from 'Compromising
Photos'
2.
The Goodies And The Beanstalk was first released by BBC Enterprises ages ago and was available all through the 80s. We’re not sure however if it featured other episodes.
3.
Four episodes of their ill-fated LWT series were released on a commercial video in the mid 80s. The shows featured were ‘Change Of Life’, ‘Ballet Crazy’, ‘Holidays’ and the brilliant Arthur C Clarke’s Mysterious World parody, ‘Bigfoot’. The video was then re-released as a ‘sell-through’ on the Video Collection label and featured only the first two of these. The shows, as is always the case, were badly edited to remove commercial breaks, losing essential comic sequences. PRS problems were also evident. In ‘Change Of Life’ there were two cuts:
a)
In a scene where he is challenged, by Graeme Garden’s computer, to relive his glory days and make a patriotic speech, Tim Brooke-Taylor keels over with nerves while David Rappaport’s robot ejaculates fireworks to the strains of ‘Land Of Hope And Glory’. The video release however substituted 'Rule Britannia', losing a very obvious Goodies running joke.
b) In the same scene The Goodies are given "30 seconds to make a hit-record". The computer’s prompts of "Give me an ooooh…" result in nothing but confusion from our heroes while the robot excels itself for a second time by singing ‘Funky Gibbon’. And, once again, the scene is altered for the video, cutting straight from the team’s confusion to the following scene, omitting the singing robot. This, presumably, because the use of ‘Funky Gibbon’ could not be cleared.
[NOTE: The LWT series is often dissed as being a bit rubbish when compared to the glory days of the BBC but this attitude is retrospective and not supportable by science. The series is up to the standard of the last few BBC series at least and every bit as inventive. The aforementioned 'Change Of Life' in particular is a fantastic post-modernist take on the BBC days in which the special effects are part of the joke - anoraked effects-men are seen in shot pulling wires, a giant goose chases them, the long-shot revealing the crane from which it dangles and, best of all, as an exploding golden egg descends on them, the three are pulled out of shot and replaced by dummies which, after the explosion, are thrown through the air. As they hit the ground (to be replaced by the real thing through the magic of stop-motion effects), Oddie is substituted in completely the wrong place.]
[NOTE (2): An Australian cable TV company recently attempted to acquire the rights to show the LWT series. They couldn’t as, apparently, it was missing from the archives.]
4.
The Comedy Channel, and later UK Gold, have shown many episodes of the show. Sadly, as was their usual practice at the time, these broadcasts were edited so as to stick commercial breaks in whenever they felt it necessary.
5.
The video release of ‘Kitten Kong’ and ‘The Goodies And The Beanstalk’ should have yielded further commercial tapes. Sadly this has not occurred, despite these having been released twice (and ‘Kitten Kong’ apparently having sold out on both these releases). A perfect contender for release would surely have been the ‘Goodies Rule OK’ show – a special which everyone remembers as featuring the famous sequence where the team do mighty battle with the characters from The Magic Roundabout, The Wombles, etc. This has never surfaced and one might ponder that this is because it features a sequence at the start where The Goodies are seen to have kick-started the career of the Beatles (they are shown in The Cavern singing ‘She Loves You’ before heckling the fab four’s rendition of the same song). It is unlikely that this could have been cleared for use .
6. ‘Scatty Safari’
(on the ‘Kitten Kong’ video) shows signs of having been edited with tasteful fade-outs in certain scenes. This is due to the original including clips of various TV shows which couldn't be cleared for copyright. A more ridiculous change however features at the end of the re-edited show as the multitude of Rolf Harrises are led into the lock up. The original show had a great big fuck-off ATV logo painted on it. The new version has substituted this for an all-encompassing ‘ITV’ sign.
Before
and after…
Okay, so what were they playing at there, d’yer reckon? Was it just the archaic nature of ATV that troubled the compilers? Surely not – after all, if the kids didn’t understand the joke then surely all they’d have to do is ask a responsible adult to explain it (and this communication within the family unit allows for bonding and education) or was it a worry about selling the videos to foreign audiences who would also not understand what ATV was, and furthermore would have nobody to clear up the confusion? This too is a rubbish excuse as The Goodies are huge in Australia - in fact Australia is seemingly the only country to give the series the credit it deserves. Which brings us to…
7. In 1999 BBC Head of Entertainment, Paul Jackson, in response to requests and petitions (not to mention the enthusiastic applause Graeme Garden always gets whenever he moans on TV shows about the lack of British Goodies repeats), put forward a proposal for BBC2 to host a Goodies Night celebrating the show’s thirtieth anniversary. This shouldn’t have been a problem (after all, an Evel Kenievel night had been given the green light the previous year…).
The proposal was turned down by BBC2 Controller Jane Root.
Jane Root, despite earlier suggestions to the contrary, appears to still hold her position at the BBC, plebbing her way through the schedules in search of a Radio Times-mentality audience.
THE GOODIES – An Episode Guide Nicked From TV Zone Magazine
SERIES ONE
Beefeaters -
(8/11/70)
Snooze - (15/11/70)
Give
Police A Chance - (22/11/70)
Playgirl
Club - (29/11/70)
Army Games -
(6/12/70)
Servants -
(13/12/70)
Pirate Radio -
(20/11/70)
SERIES TWO
The Loch Ness Monster -
(1/10/71)
The Commonwealth Games -
(8/10/71)
Pollution - (15/10/71)
The
Lost Tribe - (22/10/71)
The Music
Lovers - (29/10/71)
Art For Art’s
Sake - (5/11/71)
Kitten Kong -
12/11/71)
Come Dancing -
(19/11/71)
Factory Farm -
(10/12/71)
Women’s Lib -
17/12/71)
Gender Education -
(31/12/71)
Charity Bounce -
(7/1/72)
Nice Person Of The Year
- (14/1/72)
SPECIAL: Kitten Kong
(remake, entered for Golden Rose Of
Montreux)
SPECIAL: A Collection Of Goodies
(Englebert Humerdink inserts)
SPECIAL: The
Goodies’ Travelling Instant Five Minute Christmas (‘Night With The Stars’ insert)
SERIES THREE
The New Office -
(4/2/73)
Hunting Pink -
(11/2/73)
The Winter Olympics -
(18/2/73)
That Old Black Magic
- (25/2/73)
For Those In Peril On The
Sea - (4/3/73)
Way Outward
Bound
- (11/3/73)
SPECIAL: Superstar - (7/7/73)
SERIES FOUR
Camelot- (1/12/73)
Invasion Of The Moon Creatures- 8/12/73)
Hospital For Hire
-
(15/12/73)
SPECIAL: The Goodies And The Beanstalk - (24/12/73)
The Stone Age- (29/12/73)
Goodies In The Nick- (5/1/74)
The
Race -
(12/1/74)
SERIES FIVE
The Movies- (10/2/75)
The Clown Virus- (17/2/75)
Chubby Chumps-
(24/2/75)
Wacky Wales- (3/3/75)
Frankenfido- (10/3/75)
Scatty Safari-
(17/3/75)
Kung Fu
Kapers!- (24/3/75)
Lighthouse Keeping Loonies-
(31/3/75)
Rome Antics- (7/4/75)
Cunning Stunts- (14/4/75)
South Africa - (21/4/75)
Bunfight At The OK Tearooms- (28/4/75)
The End - (5/5/75)
SPECIAL: The Goodies Rule – OK? - (21/12/75)
SERIES SIX
Almighty Cod
- (21/9/76)
Hype Pressure
- (28/9/76)
Daylight Robbery On The Orient Express
- (5/10/76)
Black And White Beauty
-
(12/10/76)
It
Might As Well Be String
- (19/10/76)
2001 And A Bit
-
(26/10/76)
SPECIAL: The Goodies – Almost Live - (2/11/76)
SERIES SEVEN
Alternative
Roots - (1/11/77)
Dodonuts - (8/11/77)
Scoutrageous - (22/11/77)
Punky Business - (29/11/77)
Royal Command -
(6/12/77)
Earthanasia - (22/12/77)
SERIES EIGHT
Politics - (14/1/80)
Saturday Night
Grease- 21 January
1980
A Kick In
The
Arts- 28 January 1980
UFO- 4 February 1980
Animals- 11 February
1980
War
Babies!- 18 February 1980
SPECIAL: The Goodies Christmas Special: Snow White 2 - 27 December 1981
SERIES NINE
Robot- 9 January 1982
Ballet Crazy- 16 January
1982
Bigfoot-
23 January 1982
Change Of Life- 30 January 1982
Holidays- 6 February
1982
Pets- 13 February 1982
