I hadn't watched this in ten years, and remembered it so well, I went ahead and bought the boxed set (3 of 4 seasons). I'm sorry I did.
Don't get me wrong; this is still a quite enjoyable short-run sit-com, with extremely pleasant characters that are easy to like, and some of the jokes still play quite nicely.
But the series has not aged well at all. It's easy to spot that the Goods would never have survived two months in "self-sufficiency" if it weren't for the good-will of their neighbors, the long-suffering Ledbetters. And it is now clear that the writing would never have played so well if the show hadn't had a genius of a casting director's choice of the 4 leads, particularly Felicity Kendall, who is really in a class of comic actress all her own - all sweet girlish bubbliness one moment, sultry nymphette sexuality the next, with just a touch of motherliness to remind us that she's playing a woman in her later 30's. There are number of episodes that would have fallen down flat with anyone in the role besides herself.
So, although I really like having this record of Kendall in her prime in a role she made great, I have to admit my memories have been somewhat dimmed. (I didn't even remember the laughtrack, which is annoying as all such are). Perhaps television simply cannot produce comedy for the ages - even Monty Python seems more odd than funny now. Oh well.
Don't get me wrong; this is still a quite enjoyable short-run sit-com, with extremely pleasant characters that are easy to like, and some of the jokes still play quite nicely.
But the series has not aged well at all. It's easy to spot that the Goods would never have survived two months in "self-sufficiency" if it weren't for the good-will of their neighbors, the long-suffering Ledbetters. And it is now clear that the writing would never have played so well if the show hadn't had a genius of a casting director's choice of the 4 leads, particularly Felicity Kendall, who is really in a class of comic actress all her own - all sweet girlish bubbliness one moment, sultry nymphette sexuality the next, with just a touch of motherliness to remind us that she's playing a woman in her later 30's. There are number of episodes that would have fallen down flat with anyone in the role besides herself.
So, although I really like having this record of Kendall in her prime in a role she made great, I have to admit my memories have been somewhat dimmed. (I didn't even remember the laughtrack, which is annoying as all such are). Perhaps television simply cannot produce comedy for the ages - even Monty Python seems more odd than funny now. Oh well.