Bill Oddie’s The Goodies was comedy genius – so why did the BBC bury it?
Bill Oddie’s The Goodies was comedy genius – so why did the BBC bury it?
Gareth RobertsMon, July 27, 2026 at 1:56 PM UTC
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The Goodies in 1975 (from left): Graeme Garden, Bill Oddie and Tim Brooke-Taylor - Michael Putland / Getty
The death of Bill Oddie certainly feels like a significant removal from my childhood, but I wonder how many of my contemporaries feel the same. Because while many of the big sensations of the Seventies remain in our cultural memory, The Goodies TV series – in which Oddie starred with Graeme Garden and the late Tim Brooke-Taylor – has somehow slipped away.
The Goodies ran for 76 episodes across nine series, from 1970 to 1982, moving from the BBC to ITV for its final run. It was huge. Merchandise included lavish, best-selling books and Top 10 hit records including The Funky Gibbon.
The format of the show was extremely simple, and extremely flexible. The Goodies were an agency that would “do anything, any place, anywhere, any time”. It unfolded in a surreal world that had no constraints or continuity, a sphere that had more in common with the Marx Brothers or wacky fourth-wall breaking movies such as Hellzapoppin’ than with any other film or TV series of its own time. It was silly and clever and often strangely disturbing, all at the same time; a torrent of comic invention.
And it was a massive success. Make no mistake, Bill, Graeme and Tim were big, big stars. They emerged through almost exactly the same route asMonty Python, with members crossing over in earlier, late-Sixties shows such as At Last the 1948 Show. But The Goodies were far more mainstream and populist than the Pythons whose humour, while madcap, often bordered on the recondite.
‘The format of the show was simple: The Goodies unfolded in a surreal world that had no constraints’ - Radio Times
Yet The Goodies’ popularity is often forgotten because the series itself was, weirdly, forgotten by the BBC, who hardly ever repeated it after its ending. The flight of the Goodies to LWT for their final series in the 1980s might have soured relations. But the BBC never put Morecambe and Wise, who did the same thing, down the same memory hole. Indeed, the three Goodies often appeared on the BBC. But for some reason, the show itself was rarely seen again.
Revisiting it recently, I expected to confirm my estimation that it was a peculiar kind of kids show for adults, with obvious and dated gags. Instead, I discovered levels of invention that are almost overwhelming in their relentless intensity. There is frequent playing with technology and the workings of television itself. Often an enormously expensive prop will appear for two seconds, get its laugh, and be off.
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Odie in a Goodies sketch from 1974 - Radio Times
The series often concerns itself with live issues of its day – big news of the social, political and scientific kinds, or fluffy fads and crazes such as Kung fu or disco. And this gives it an undercurrent, as a comic comment on how people live in the modern world.
The three characters are exaggerations of each Goodie’s real self: Tim the soft, posh traditionalist, Graeme the bloodless scientific genius with no moral qualms, and Bill the scruffy anarchist. Their show encompasses so many different types of comedy – wordplay, slapstick silent, surreal, social comment. It goes straight from the arcane and erudite to the kinds of things that make toddlers giggle. The stunts are frequently breathtaking, and inconceivable in our age of health and safety.
The best remembered episodes – the giant kitten, the puppet government, the “Bunfight at the OK Tea Rooms” – linger because of their central imagery. But there are many others which are just as good and deserve to be shown again. I was shocked by the 1975 episode “The Movies”, where the conventions of cinema break out into real life. It runs one immaculately innovative set piece after another, gag after gag after gag.
The show encompassed wordplay, surreal and social comment; Beryl Reid with The Goodies in 1971 - Radio Times
Away from the more controlled film sequences, the studio material of The Goodies, recorded in front of a live audience, often has a scary, under-rehearsed, flying-by-the-seat-of-its-pants quality. There are always complicated props and live special effects being attempted. These scenes often feel oddly but enjoyably tense, as they must have done on the night.
Indeed, many of the episodes have stories which are motivated by the anger of Bill Oddie’s character. When he talked openly about his bipolar disorder that emerged much later, it didn’t feel all that much of a surprise. Because there is always an edge to Bill the Goodie, especially in the episodes relating to what we would now call “green issues”. It was always clear that he cared very, very deeply about the natural world, and raged against its despoilers.
It will be as a naturalist that many will remember him. But we should not forget the joy given to us by Bill Oddie the Goodie – manic mirth in the face of a cruel, crazy world.
Source: “AOL Entertainment”
