Tuesday, 23 April 2019

A Comedy On This Day: The Good Life - Our Speaker Today (24 April 1977)


MARGO: I just came round to apologise. I'm so sorry, Lady Truscott. I really am desperately sorry.

LADY TRUSCOTT: What for?

MARGO: This is my husband Jeremy.

 Several different interesting strands plait together well in this episode. Barbara befriends an aristocrat, Lady ("Call me George") Truscott (Angela Thorne), who coerces her into doing a lot of public speaking for good causes. Margo is upset to see the natural order of things upset by such a highborn woman befriending the Goods and not her. Tom's construction of a new chicken shed is disrupted by Lady Truscott's calls upon Barbara's time.

 The script does a good job of keeping everyone sympathetic. Tom is (thankfully) entirely supportive of his wife's unexpected aptitude for public speaking. Despite Margo's unreasonable expectations, the two couples' friendship isn't placed under any stress - There's one very useful line when Barbara says to Margo, Well why don't you just invite Lady Truscott over? It doesn't get a laugh, but it does direct the audience how to most constructively find the situation funny.

 The scenes with Tom and the chickens are light visual relief from the main storylines, but create maybe the funniest moment in the whole of The Good Life involving beast or fowl, when the rooster escapes and hops onto a bus to Kingston. The episode's initial shot of a coop of new chicks ("those canaries" according to Margo) also engenders a good mood on the part of the viewer from the outset.

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