British Comedy Guide

The Good Life Page 4

Quote: Alfred J Kipper @ March 8 2011, 9:58 AM GMT

The show was really having a dig at the ideology behind the ultra liberal lifestyle that the Goods took up. It was a more a celebration of the Leadbetters' conventional suburban middle England lifestyle and Conservative type aspirations and their materialism, as their posessions more than once saved the day for their opt out neighbours.

Uh, yeah, I interviewed co-writer/creator Bob Larbey last year, and I can promise you that it really wasn't. Any such inkling of 'celebration' of the lifestyle the Goods left behind is only due to the fact that the self-sustenance life wasn't actually, well, sustainable.

It doesn't have to be intentional to be there, it is there as a minor thread all the way through it, it is not its primary function, it may be subliminal, it can easily be missed or dismissed by the show's creator, but here, as a result of the constant failures of the Goods and their victories coming only with the help of the Leadbetters, it became a factor. It just did. It is a natural, inevitable, logical consequence.

Fictions take on an independent life of their own, one of the reasons why writing them can be so fiendishly difficult. I can assure you there is more to Larbey & Esmonde's sitcom than they may want to suggest.

I'll give you a quick and crude example, Aaron, you write a sitcom that has Chavs living in a posh street (having won the lottery) next door to old school poshos and in every episode the chavs end up getting one over on their stuck up neighbours, then like it or not, deny it or not, you have created within that sitcom a thread or aura of promoting or celebrating the lifestyle of the chavs over and above the toffs. It will be pro chav, anti posh. It just will be. It exists as a natural result of your episode endings favouring them (This is why what I said exists in The Good Life does indeed exist).

You cannot then take this element out or deny it is there, you may not want to have people focus on it or be thought of as intending this social or cultural judgment, but you have indeed benefited greatly from it, even if you don't know it or understand it. It is a major part of fiction, especially visual fiction, and it is the Godsend for commercial writers and makers who exploit it all the time.

Actions constantly in favour of one party over another make statements, it is just so.

Quote: Alfred J Kipper @ March 8 2011, 3:22 PM GMT

Actions constantly in favour of one party over another make statements, it is just so.

I think you're reading far too much into things. Rigsby and Alan Partridge are Tories that regularly fall flat on their face, yet I wouldn't catergorise either of those sitcoms as anti-Tory.

The truth is succesful sitcom needs conflict and failure to work. And in most shows, certainly British ones, the central characters struggle and fail. Because it's funny. You wouldn't get many laughs out of a hugely succesful protagonist.

This is so, having conflict goes without saying, but a writer makes choices over who fails and who wins. It is usually best to keep these winners and losers constant, it just works better because the viewer can identify with their favourites, (which may not necessarily be the winner, we in Britain do love a loser, and this is reflected in many of our sitcoms).

Quote: chipolata @ March 8 2011, 4:06 PM GMT

Rigsby and Alan Partridge are Tories that regularly fall flat on their face, yet I wouldn't catergorise either of those sitcoms as anti-Tory.

But in a minor way, they of course are. They are making fun of the pompous aspects of being Tory in a minor key, it is still part of the effect the writers want their characters' plight to have on the viewer. Why else would a writer give any such character details as their political leanings? - it is all done to make capital out of.

Just to restate that The Good Life subverts some standard conventions in sitcom, it is a complex model, you wouldn't use it as guide for new writers. It is more useful as an advanced model for how to achieve a well rounded feel good sitcom, as this is the ultimate feel good sitcom in my book, at least it was until The Vicar Of Dibley came along (a very basic model of sitcom).

I think it's the only show to have been seen live by the Queen (though she did show an interest in On The Buses...)

Well I sincerely hope that I don't notice the political sways one way are another, if there are any. I just want to be entertained.

But, the reason I sought out this thread is that I just learned that our local PBS affiliate will start airing The Good Life next week. I'm looking forward to it, as I have heard much discussion about it, and am very much a fan of To The Manor Born, Larbey, and Penelope Keith.

But not just for her acting! Lovey

Quote: Tim Azure @ July 7 2013, 8:46 AM BST

Saying that the lifestyle is unsustainable is a Tory (or maybe New Labour) view though. The Goods would be supported in a commune, for instance. Surbiton, not so.

But being in a commune is then not being self-sufficient, is it? It's joining a wider collective. The individual back-to-earth lifestyle as portrayed in The Good Life, was unsustainable.

Rising Damp is utterly marvellous, by the way.

No, unsustainable (no 'b') doesn't suggest anything. It states that the lifestyle would ultimately not prove financially possible. So eventually Tom or Barbara would have had to get some more regular work, thus turning the self-sufficiency into a hobby of sorts.

Quote: Aaron @ July 8 2013, 11:57 AM BST

No, unsustainable (no 'b') doesn't suggest anything. It states that the lifestyle would ultimately not prove financially possible. So eventually Tom or Barbara would have had to get some more regular work, thus turning the self-sufficiency into a hobby of sorts.

But it is a judgement call the writer is making, albeit an obvious one. It's the equivalent of saying "Jimmy Carr's lifestyle is unsubstainable." Jimmy Carr's lifestyle may continue for the foreseeable, but you are suggesting it can't...

Now I'm just getting confused.

To clarify: I don't think there was any hidden message in The Good Life about the sustainability or otherwise of the lifestyle, or a particularly in-depth one of the usual rat-race, other than 'it's a bit of a bitch really, isn't it?'. It just so happened that the self-sufficiency model the Goods lived by in the show, could never actually work in real life.

I think the show's more about Tom's mid life crisis than getting a whole new life anyway. Tom and Barbara generally stay middle class.

Having once -- a long time ago! -- done the "back to the land" thing (pigs and veggies and the loom and all) I can attest that it's not really sustainable without a source of at least some income. But only because you can't actually generate electricity the way Tom and Barbara did or take your goat to the public park to graze or legally drive whatever contraption it was they built. Having "been there", sort of, I can tell you it makes me laugh very hard. It's a wonderful show.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2360180/The-Good-Life-Couple-spend-just-50-YEAR-bills-collect-rain-water-flush-toilets-grow-food--detached-bungalow-Basingstoke.html

Tom and Barbara didn't have 6 acres in Surrey. :(
Or solar panels.

Or a tiny shed house, but a large detached.

Interesting read though! Suggests it may actually be nearing feasability with modern technology.

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