How many goodies episodes

Norman Mitchell Gerald as Gerald …. Barry Cryer Newsreader as Newsreader. More like this. Storyline Edit. The Goodies are a three-man agency whose motto is to do 'anything, anytime'. This gave the series carte blanche to do whatsoever it pleased, which did turn out to be absolutely anything, all with a cartoon-like surrealism and a heavy reliance on slapstick. Anytime, anyplace, anywhere.

Did you know Edit. Trivia According to the program Curious and Unusual Deaths , this show caused an English man to laugh so long in that he died. Connections Featured in Comedy Classics of the 80's User reviews 18 Review. Top review. The Funkiest Gibbons In Town! 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. Details Edit. Release date November 8, United Kingdom.

United Kingdom. Narrow Your Mind. Technical specs Edit. Runtime 30 minutes. Related news. Nov 6 MovieWeb. Contribute to this page Suggest an edit or add missing content. Yet such redefined parameters, along with the shorter, 25 minute length for ITV push the show back into a rigidly defined, linear narrative. No longer do The Goodies have the power to surprise with inspired zaniness, instead the series treads a predictable path.

Animals was the final LWT episode, with Michael Grade pulling the plug while the stars got paid for all of their contracted three years. This meant that they were contractually obligated not to work together, and so concluded The Goodies with their poorest shows. The final shot is a strangely apt aping of Warner Bros.

The concept behind Change Of Life — a meta critique-cum-deconstruction of The Goodies' own past, and how they're getting too old to make it — is, in principle, a rewarding one.

Sadly, it's all swamped in broad overplaying, comedy robots and bright lighting, with a brash LWT audience roaring over every line. Bill, while still nowhere near as overweight as he was in the first four series, is clearly heavier than in his slimmed down, '75 peak, and the concept of Bill with no shirt on, having his nipples tweaked by Tim, is the opening basis of the humour on display.

Later instances include them all dressing up with mock-plastic surgery to appear "young" Such an assertion may seem over-analytical for what is, at heart, just a silly show, but the ITV world of The Goodies saw them as less energised creatures, and not roaming the suburban streets of Cricklewood, but patrolling rundown alleys by the ATV studios.

As a result, it feels more depressingly realistic, the surreal elements jarring with a show where the ever-vocal audience act as a constant reminder that this was a typical ITV Saturday night. While it's disheartening to run an article on the Goodies and slate any of the series, it has to be acknowledged that the LWT stuff simply isn't very good, certainly not in comparison to the rest of their work. The final punchline of this one sees them trying to get their jobs back at the BBC, only to find they've been taken.

While a tongue-in-cheek reference to their situation, history shows that it was only too close to the truth: the group effectively cast out from their home over eleven years, and languishing at an ITV that didn't want them when it had them.

Although The Goodies was regarded as underperforming in its ITV timeslot embarrassingly being watched by less people than the Mind Your Language repeats that replaced it , the figures by today's standards are surprisingly high.

Every episode of the ninth series was watched by more than eleven million people, with the ratings consistent Snow White 2 was the lowest-rated of all their ITV shows, achieving just 8.

Unusually for a Goodies Christmas special, it's just a standard length episode, that standard length now being 25 minutes on a channel with, ironically enough, commercials. Unremittingly childish yet with some adult innuendo, it stands up better than the majority of the LWT output, which is faint praise. Though with elements like domineering women and all three Goodies blacked up with bones through their noses, it's a testament to why their days were numbered this far into their run.

Times had moved on in the s, but The Goodies hadn't been able to move with it. Once a much-beloved show, on the basis of nearly every LWT entry, it's not hard to argue that the series had had its day and needed to be rested. The Goodies were products of their time, and many elements of the series will perhaps not only make viewers in uncomfortable, but even the stars themselves have spoken about their embarrassment over questionable content.

While Free To Live seems to have its heart in the right place, it's hugely dated now, a one-joke piece that sends up women in the name of equality. The Goodies have spoken about how they see their roles, despite sharing their real names, as "characters", and Bill's being closest to their own beliefs.

With this in mind, then it's creditable that Bill is the one pushing for female rights in this episode, even though, troublingly, it's one of three series two episodes that uses the word "rape" as part of its comedic arsenal. In November Channel 4 aired a series looking back at television of the period, with Oddie as one of the contributors.

Lastly, the episode title here is as it appears on the DVD release, even though it's more commonly known amongst fans as Women's Lib. It was only from series three onwards that the camera scripts started to carry specific episode titles, and they were generally known as things like "Show 2" for the first two series.

The Goodies came in on the back of the 60s satire boom, and kept their family friendly-yet-edgy brand of humour relevant throughout much of the '70s. Yet by the time of series eight it was the beginning of the s, and non-mainstream comedy, of which The Goodies was arguably a part, was taking a seismic shift towards what is pejoratively known as "political correctness".

Now safe and unthreatening, the humour of the series in the new decade was MOR, and with them still doing a blackface gag at this late stage of the show, they were rapidly becoming relics. What's perhaps disappointing about series eight is that the programme suddenly relies so heavily on film parodies for its humour, and, as most of those films, as here, are over 18 months old, it does make it obvious that the scripts hadn't been updated since strike action at the BBC curtailed them being filmed.

While rewriting them would have been too drastic a decision unlike many other previous parodies, here the spoofs are central to the plots the scripts were actually commissioned by the BBC in August , and not made until late