‘Good Neighbors’ keeps me laughing

When I have that rare moment of quiet, alone time, one of my favorite things to do is brew a cup of tea and watch an episode of “Good Neigh­bors,” a British sit-com that ran from 1975–78. I used to watch reruns of the pro­gram when I was in high school back in the ’80s. Let’s face it, with only three local chan­nels and PBS, the TV pick­ings were slim so we watched a lot of pub­lic tele­vi­sion, which is a good thing although I am cer­tain I groused about it then. In addi­tion to the big net­work pro­grams like “The Love Boat,” “Fan­tasy Island, “Dal­las” and “Dukes of Haz­ard,” I could be found watch­ing “Fawlty Tow­ers,” “Mas­ter­piece The­atre” and oth­ers, but my favorite was “Good Neigh­bors.” So for this past Christ­mas, I unashamedly asked for the com­plete DVD set and my dad, also a PBS fan, indulged me.

Cre­ated by John Esmonde and Bob Lar­bey, the sit­com was called “The Good Life” when it was released and ran in the U.K. When it came to the U.S., the title was changed so as not to be con­fused with an Amer­i­can sit­com called “The Good Life” star­ring Larry Hag­man and Donna Mills which ran in the early ’70s. (This is accord­ing to valdefierro.com which has great infor­ma­tion on the show).

The premise is pretty funny and is per­fect for the ’70s when the first rays of the “green move­ment” were really break­ing through but is even more funny now. It fol­lows Tom Good (played by Richard Briers) and his wife Bar­bara (played by Felic­ity Kendal) who decide they’ve had enough of the rat race and decide to become com­pletely self-sufficient. They con­vert their sub­ur­ban Lon­don gar­den into a farm, raise pigs and chick­ens and grow their own crops — much to the dis­may of their still social-ladder-climbing friends and neigh­bors Margo Lead­bet­ter (Pene­lope Keith) and her hen-pecked hus­band Jerry (Paul Edding­ton). The antics that ensue are rather hilar­i­ous, in my opin­ion, as the dia­logue takes pop-shots at both the mid­dle class and green lifestyles.

There are 30 episodes in all and two spe­cials: The 1977 Christ­mas Spe­cial and the Royal Com­mand Per­for­mance given for Queen Eliz­a­beth II in June of 1978. You can find more infor­ma­tion online (the BBC web­site is good) and even order the DVD set (Dad got mine on Amazon.com). I am only on the sec­ond of the four discs and am tak­ing my time and savor­ing each episode, despite the fact that my 19-year-old chides me when he catches me watching.

Tues­day Trip­pier lives in Delaware, is a writer and mother of four with a spe­cial inter­est in learn­ing and writ­ing about green living.

Posted by Tuesday Trippier on Jun 12 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.