Hey Americans

Saw about four episodes in Illinois back in the late '70s on public TV. Had no idea what was going on but the giant cat was a gut-buster. It was my very first inroduction to Brittish humor programming. Now here's what perplexes me: I look it up some 35 years later and expect to find as many episodes as Faulty Towers. And here it runs for twelve years? Everyone talks about Python, Young Ones, Ab Fab, The Office, Benny Hill and Black Adder all the time. The Goodies nearly has as many episodes as those shows combined and not a peep about it?

What do we have that even comes close? The Simpsons and select seasons of Saturday Night Live, MadTV maybe? As to your question about quality: In America, we judge quality in longevity. The Goodies must have been great, nobody here would deny it, but nobody here knows of it.

You guys have always been on the cutting edge in experimenting with television formats. Dr. Who had the first season long story-line arc that I can recall, the unfortunate "Keys to Time (Wasting)". (Fans: bite my bottle of Ginger Beer) Now it's all the rage in American programming, from Buffy to Battlestar Galactica. The closest we ever got was Ernie Kovaks who was unfortunatly cut down in his prime.

Speaking of Dr. Who, the new incarnation TOTALLY ROCKS! I used to dream of tripping through time with the Doctor's rather hot companions (First Sahah Jane, then Leela) because the episodes put me to sleep. Where have you folks been hiding actresses like the one who plays "Rose Tyler"? Whoever green-lighted that project ought to be here putting the paddles to the Star Trek franchise. (Trekkies who disagree can turn on GalaxyQuest, followed by some Red Dwarf, live the life for 20 minutes in Vegas, or bite my Jelly Babies.)

Oh yeah, my kid is jonsin' for a new season of Thomas, and more Wallace and Grommit. Now I have a new collection to strart. Uuugh!

Are the Goodies good? Oh, yeah!

I recall watching the series as a very young teenager in the late '70s. My local public broadcasting outlet, KQED in San Francisco, had been running the same episodes of Monty Python over and over for a few years. I guess they felt they needed to vary things a bit, so they ran "The Goodies" for a few weeks and put Python on hiatus. I was outraged. The first couple of episodes of Goodies left me unimpressed. I thought they were way too childish (and when you're a teenager, you don't want childish). Then, they ran the "Apartheight" episode. My older sister and I were in hysterics. It was funny, and managed to make a political statement and be completely un-PC at the same time. After viewing that, I went on to enjoy further episodes of the show, including the kitten that took over the city, the skyscraper encased in concrete, and the punk rock show. I can't remember them all, but I also enjoyed some of Bill's songs (Funky Gibbon, etc.) and their commercial parodies. I recently watched some of those short bits on YouTube, then bought the second DVD disc set from AmazonUK, since I have a multiregion player and that one has the Apartheight episode. The eight episodes on that made me laugh even now, though it is even more dated, and the slapstick chases tend to run on a bit too long in most episodes.

Yes, they really should be run on something like Comedy Central, or have another run on public TV, since they still show "Butterflies," "Are You Being Served?", and Python. Why not the Goodies? Heck, "Fawlty Towers" ran for years here in the States, and there are hardly any episodes of that show! The Goodies could provide a deep font of episodes.