The Good Life, released in the US as Good Neighbors, was created by John Esmonde and Bob Larbey, The Good Life's four series from 1975-8 are remembered as our favourite laugh. Constantly available on UKTV, it's a must visit for anyone interested in British sitcom.

On his 40th birthday, Tom Good decides that he's had enough of the rat race and that he and wife Barbara will become self-sufficient. The pair convert their garden into a farm, get in the pigs and chickens, grow their own crops and on one memorable occasion, try to dye their own wool with nettles.

Tom and Barbara would just be lone loons were it not for their neighbours, the henpecked Jerry Leadbetter and wife Margot, a social climber who cannot bear chickens wandering the back garden.

Good Life?

Attacking the middle class and the 'alternative' lifestyle at once, The Good Life showed Margot's snobbishness as blindness, and Tom's fanatical self-sufficiency as going too far. Tom's pursuit of natural alternatives include his attempts to make a methane-powered for their home that continually breaks down.

The Good Life was remarkable for the consistent characterisation. Though initially dominated by Tom, Barbara was soon balancing his mad schemes with pragmatism and comforting his occasional lapses into depression. Jerry's mocking derision of Tom's step sideways becomes a grudging respect, and even snobbish Margot was human and real.

Tom, Barbara, Jerry and Margo The series showcased the talents of Richard Briers, Felicity Kendal, Penelope Keith and Paul Eddington and made all three of the latter into solo stars afterwards, with Kendal becoming a sex-symbol (still is, let’s face it) While Keith in To The Manor Born and Eddington in Yes Minister, created roles that were to become even better known than their Good Life creations.

The thirty episodes of The Good Life became household favourites, and are still enduring icons of their time.

In a good-natured, light-hearted way, they showed how hard it was, and is, to be different to those around you, and the kind of courage it takes to be so.

Click to View Season 1 Episode 1.

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