The Golden Age of the BBC
When I first saw the Good Life (the British name) in the 1970s as an impressionable kid, I immediately loved it. Everybody was so nice and civilized unlike the glue-sniffing, head-butting ruffians at my local Scottish comprehensive school. I was so charmed that I almost wanted to become English, middle-class, and 'awfully nice.' I also developed a raging crush on Felicity Kendal.

This series was a product of the golden age of British TV when the BBC was more like a giant artists' collective than the faceless management bureau it has since become. The casting is incredible. The four main actors are hand-in-glove with their roles.Paul Eddington as the long-suffering but slyly rebellious Jerry is the perfect foil for Margot's innocent pomposity. Felicity Kendall's Barbara is both tomboyish and kittenish and serves as a welcome check on Richard Brier's naughty little boy act as the exuberant and mischievous Tom.

For those unfamiliar with the situation of this situation comedy, it concerns the efforts of Tom and Barbara Good to escape the 9-to-5, Monday-to-Friday, suburbs-to-city commuting rat race, by starting a commune in their own garden, and the effect this has on their relationship with their very strait-laced neighbors, Jerry and Margot.

Although this tape is labeled volume 4 it actually includes the 1st, 2nd, and 6th episodes of the first series. So, if you want to start chronologically, this tape should be first. The reason the order is so confused is because the BBC was not wholly committed to the project, selecting what they thought were the best episodes and putting them out on video in an ad hoc way. The 3 episodes and their original broadcast dates are:

(1) Plough Your Own Furrow - 4th of April, 1975

This episode has overtones of another great BBC comedy series - the "Rise and Fall of Reginald Perrin" - as Tom Good becomes dissatisfied with his job. Although designing small plastic animals for cereal packets is patently absurd, the other people in his office take it all very seriously. Turning his back on the false idols of success, he decides to jump ship from the rat race and seek a more meaningful life by using his large suburban garden to become self-sufficient. Barbara plays a key role in this episode, but Margot and Jerry hardly feature.

(2) Say Little Hen - 11th of April, 1975

Tom and Barbara's new life hasn't yet been established. Tom's neighbors, Jerry and Margot, making assumptions based on their own value system, try to persuade Tom's boss to take him back.

(3) The Pagan Rite - 9th of May, 1975

Although this is the sixth episode, it is thematically linked to the first two with Tom's former boss seeking him out to do some freelance work. Wanting some money to treat Barbara, Tom is tempted to give in to the forces of consumer materialism that their lifestyle is a rebellion against, but Barbara sees this as the thin end of the wedge.

Continuing at the beginning of the Good Life
This volume contains some of the earlier episodes of "Good Neighbors" (originally titled "The Good Life"). Unlike some other series, the episodes are not shown in order, losing some of the wonderful continuity of the show. Even so, the chemistry of the performers make the show worth watching on an episode by episode basis.

In "Plough Your Own Furrow", the first episode of the series, Tom Good greets his 40th birthday with a desire for more to his life than a career designing toy plastic animals to go into cereal packets. As he strives to identify the elusive "it" that he craves, he arrives at a bit of inspired insanity: chuck the 9-to-5 world to work at the job of life itself through suburban self-sufficiency. With wife Barbara at his side, and to the bewildered chagrin of next-door neighbors Jerry and Margo Leadbetter, Tom cheerfully begins the task of raising crops and accumulating livestock in the London suburb of Surbiton.

"Say, Little Hen", the second episode of the series, continues the Good chronicles as Tom and Barbara add a goat and chickens to the back garden. Sure that their friends are heading for rack and ruin, the Leadbetters attempt to set them straight with a carefully-arranged dinner party, but when the party goes awry, Tom and Barbara excuse themselves for a home-made chicken dinner (of sorts) alone.

In "The Pagan Rite", Tom finds Barbara wistfully remembering the occasional extravagant indulgence the Goods once enjoyed, and secretly arranges through Jerry for some freelance work to earn money to treat her to one last fling. But it's Tom who might get flung when Barbara learns, through Margo, that Tom has apparently compromised his principles to go back to wage-earning.

Once again, these latest episodes of a classic sitcom are well worth a watch.