Why we’re still in pursuit of The Good Life
No doubt history will remember 4 April, 1975 as the day Microsoft was founded in Albuquerque, New Mexico. But for some of us, it was the day The Good Life began in Surbiton. Seen now, it wasn’t a riotous start, but sitcoms rarely manage those. In British comedy especially, familiarity is all, and we’d soon enough become familiar with Richard Briers’s Tom Good, disillusioned plastics designer and pioneer eco-activist. We join Tom on his 40th birthday, the day he’ll resign his meaningless job in favour of agricultural self-sufficiency, turning his garden into a farm. Felicity Kendal as Barbara Good dances attendance around the kitchen, deploying what will eventually become, in real life, the Rear of the Year, 1981. Briers came to the series as the only accredited laugh-raiser. His name continued to appear above and before the title, but it’s to his credit that he quickly saw the possibilities in Penelope Keith and Paul Eddington’s portrayal of the exasperated neighbours, the Leadbetters, and asked for their supporting roles to be expanded. They all went on to star in comedy “vehicles” of their own. Perhaps Eddington, whose character is the least luminous of the four, went furthest, as the baffled Jim Hacker MP in Yes Minister. The casting, in short, was perfect. Sitcom opposition was plentiful in 1975. Porridge had recently finished its first series and Fawlty Towers would emerge later in the year. Last of the Summer Wine had started out on its chronic trundle towards a faroff extinction in the 31st series. But The Good Life has held its own with all of those. Neither of the writers, John Esmonde and Bob Larbey, survives, so it’s too late to congratulate them on the enduringly topical themes they chose. It’s not just that anxiety over “feeding the planet” has deepened over these 40 years (in any case, the Goods’ agrarian scheme is really only an excuse for them to outrage the Leadbetters with their muck and noise and wellies). It’s that the shape and nature of the British middle class remain as mysterious as ever. Calling the neighbouring men Tom and Jerry suggests an oncoming fight, but the show proves more like a cooperative search for the heart of middle-classness – somewhere between the Leadbetters’ conformist, faux-posh acquisitiveness and the scruffy idealism of the Goods. Margaret Thatcher had just become Leader of the Opposition in February 1975. We were still trying to get used to her tone of voice. So was she. Margo Leadbetter’s tones were more bearably produced, but as a strident lady who never saw the funny side of anything (and worse, didn’t see why anything should have a funny side), she conformed to the same type. Yet her self-righteousness commanded some support. Nobody who sees it forgets Margo’s visit to the council rates office, where she outlines which of the charges she’s not going to pay. “Just who do you think you are, Mrs Leadbetter?” protests the clerk. “I am the silent majority,” announces Margo – a resounding contradiction in terms, especially the way she says it. A darker area of mystery in the show, almost inevitably, is sex. The prevailing childlessness almost compels you to think about it, if only in the negative. Is this, you know, naughty suburbia? In series three there’s some evidence of reciprocal fancying, but Esmonde and Larbey took things no further than that. What’s remarkable is how much we, the audience, loved all of them, glad though we were, for different reasons, that none of them lived next door. Russell Davies The Good Life is available to buy on DVD (RRP: £25.99)