The
lowdown: 'The Goodies' was a long-running BBC comedy series
starring Tim Brooke-Taylor, Graham Garden and Bill
Oddie. It ran on BBC1 from
late 1970 until early 1980, before briefly being resurrected on ITV. A
total of 78 half-hour episodes
were made for the BBC, plus
several specials. Sadly, some of these episodes have been lost or exist
only in black and white.
The original premise of
the series was that the Goodies ran an employment agency hiring themselves
out to clients for various
purposes - their slogan
was 'we do anything, anytime', although over the years this aspect of the
concept was quietly shelved
in favour of plots that
became increasingly surreal. 'The Goodies' frequently sent up other BBC
television personalities, films
of the day, historical events,
and basically anything they could get away with.
'The Baddies' was the 13th
episode of the second season, and featured Patrick Troughton as a mad scientist,
Dr Wolfgang
Adolphus Ratfink von Petal,
who has previously won a Nobel Prize for being the most unpleasant and
irresponsible scientist
of the century. He now wants
to win the Nice Person of the Year Award. The Goodies have also been nominated
for the award,
so Dr von Petal creates
robot duplicates of the Goodies and the 200 other finalists. The robots
are sent out to do 'wicked things',
as von Petal puts it, in
order to make his rivals look bad and eliminate them from the competition.
This is not one of the best
episodes of 'The Goodies',
but Patrick Troughton is brilliant. Sadly, only a handful of episodes of
'The Goodies' are currently
available on DVD, and 'The
Baddies' is not among them. Release more Goodies on DVD! Although the series
has dated badly
- the hairstyles could only
belong in the 1970s - the Goodies still provides great entertainment, and
some episodes remain
classics even today ('Kitten
Kong', for example).
Trivia:
The
Goodies was never that popular in the UK and was rarely screened until
satellite TV was established. It was often
regarded
by programmers as a children's show, despite the fact that much of the
humour was very adult in nature. However,
it
gained a cult following in Australia, largely because the national broadcaster
showed regular repeats in an evening timeslot
during
much of the 1970s and early 1980s (immediately before 'Doctor Who' aired
at 6:30pm, in fact).
Quote:
(Dr von Petal) 'Why? Because
I'm wicked and cruel, and horrible and evil. It's just the way I'm made.'
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