Comfort Classic: The Good Life

COMFORT CLASSIC

A show that gently sends up the English middle class is built on a sharp script and consummate acting, says Matthew Bell

Self-sufficiency in the suburbs: Felicity Kendal and Richard Briers as the Goods

There is, surely, no more fitting comfort comedy for lockdown than The Good Life, a tale of stay-at-home self-sufficiency. Tom and Barbara Good were the original artisan couple: sowing spuds, brewing booze and weaving wool.

The 1970s BBC sitcom was created by John Esmonde and Bob Larbey, friends since their Clapham schooldays, who had already created one comedy classic, ITV’s Please Sir!. That starred John Alderton as an idealistic English teacher at a tough secondary school.

The Good Life couldn’t have been more different. Set in Surbiton – now, thanks to the sitcom, a byword for English suburbia – the first episode begins with Tom Good (Richard Briers) suffering a mid-life crisis on his 40th birthday.

Stuck in a job he hates – designing plastic animals for cereal promotions – Tom quits the office and, with wife Barbara (Felicity Kendal), digs up the garden to grow veg and raise animals.

Next-door neighbour Jerry Leadbetter (Paul Eddington) works with Tom but, thanks to his native cunning and incessant crawling to the boss, he has climbed the career ladder and been made a manager. His wife, Margo (Penelope Keith) is humourless and an appalling snob. When the Goods bring home a goat, she looks down her nose and observes, “Degradation, misery and squalor – and we have to live next door to it”.

The set-up seems obvious: we should love the Goods for quitting the rat race and embracing a green, wholesome life; we should hate the Thatcherite Leadbetters. But not so fast: the lovey-dovey Goods are also smug and maddening, while Jerry is droll and

BBC