Buying old television series on DVD generally seems pretty pointless. The satellite and cable companies seems to be dedicated to re-broadcasting stuff we have already seen umpteen times. Much as I admire David Suchard’s acting, I really don’t feel the need to see Hercule Poirot Exercises His Little Grey Cells again and again and again. So, it was with some surprise that I found 2 golden oldies that have not been flogged to death in the repeats market. Not only that, they are fresh, watchable and modern.

The Goodies

Staring: Graeme Garden, Bill Oddie and Tim Brooke-Taylor

Classification: 12

I probably wouldn’t have bought the DVD of The Goodies had I not been to see their live show, The Goodies still Rule OK, which is itself very very funny. This was a series I adored as a child but I thought that the reason it had not been repeated was probably because the humour must have dated horribly. Not so. Whilst some of the episodes contain a few “Political Incorrectnesses”, there is none of the grating racism, classism and crude vulgarity that characterised so many television comedy shows of the early seventies.

The basic story line is that three unemployed blokes set up an agency promising to do “Anything, Anywhere, Any Time”. Each episode sees them attempting another job, with little success. Whilst children have always enjoyed the show, it was not really designed as a children's programme. The visual humour is great for kids but there are subtleties that only adults will appreciate.

Kitten Kong sees the three setting up an animal care agency. Fluffy, the white kitten is fed growth hormones and goes on the rampage in central London, finally climbing and demolishing the Post Office Tower. There are some excellent pieces of slapstick with animals running amuck dragging their hapless humans with them.

Gender Education involves The Goodies writing a sex education video, with No Rude Bits and without the mention of the word “sex”. The episode was born, apparently, because the Keep Smut off Television campaigner, Mary Whitehouse, had told the BBC how much she enjoyed the show and “We couldn’t have the Monty Python team coming up to us and saying “Mary Whitehouse likes you.””

Probably the most famous episode on the DVD collection is Kung Fu Capers– famous because at its first showing one poor individual, with a weak heart and a good sense of humour, died laughing. This episode portrayed the age old Lancastrian martial art of Ecky Thump, which involved participants hitting each other with black puddings before rising up in revolution to take over the country.

A combination of witty dialogue and pure slapstick, the Goodies remains fresh and funny. The humour is rather gentle by today’s standards and it seems extraordinary that the Australian Board of Censors (Australians not usually being noted for their prudishness) cut some og the episodes when they were originally broadcast.

Not all the original episodes are on the DVD collection – the double set shows eight of the best. There are one or two weaker pieces but generally the collection is a delight and will appeal not only to those who enjoyed the original broadcasts but to a new generation as well.

Rating 4/5

The Goodies - At Last, and At Last a Second Helping are both availble to buy or to rent from www.amazon.co.uk

The Goodies Still Rule OK! is on tour nationally with performances at Torquay, Birmingham, Canterbury, Basingstoke, Reading, Eastbourne, Colchester, Lincoln, High Wycombe and Hull

Upstairs Downstairs

Staring: Gordon Jackson, Jean Marsh, Angela Baddeley, Pauline Collins

Classification: PG

A cross between a soap opera and a costume drama, Upstairs, Downstairs first went out on London Weekend Television, winning many awards. Set in the London home of a Tory Member of Parliament, Richard Bellemy, in the early part of the twentieth century, the series follows the fortunes of the family (upstairs) and their servants (downstairs).

The action is set against the changing political and social environment of the time. Each episode is a stand alone story but a general narrative thread runs through the series.

The master and mistress are still Victorian in their outlook, as are their senior servants who believe “in knowing their place”. The younger generation – the children who are young adults – have very different views on life. The daughter, educated in Germany, is an ardent socialist and is determined to work for political change – whatever the political and emotional cost to her conservative parents. The son, more conventional and in the army, still finds himself attracted to the under parlour maid, despite the difference in rank which would so have shocked his parents.

The servants consist of a core of long-standing staff (the butler, cook and parlour maid) and junior servants who are more or less disastrous and have a short shelf life. The Butler, Hudson, similar to a senior manager in a modern firm, has the unenviable task of overseeing the below stairs behaviour of his staff, whilst maintaining smooth-running of the establishment.

The acting is superb; the characters believable and the costumes simply gorgeous. The very first episodes are in black and white but most are in colour. Occasionally we perhaps feel that life at 165 Eaton Place is a little too eventful to be believable but, after all this is fiction. The historical detail, covering time of immense social change, gives depth to the narrative and lifts the drama out of the realms of ordinary soap fiction. 

Rating 5/5 The series runs to 5 box sets – potentially addictive, so take care!

Upstairs, Downstairs is availble to buy or to rent from www.amazon.co.uk