A Comedy On This Day: The Good Life - The Pagan Rite (9 May 1975)

 If only I had the memory and could reproduce Penelope Keith's intonation, then The Good Life really is one of the most quotable comedy series that there's ever been. Margo has a reply for every occasion. Just a few from this week:

Oh, I'm so sorry. I thought you were telling a joke.

I've got a horrible feeling that this conversation is nose-diving into the carnal.

Then will you kindly eat it in the kitchen with the extractor fan full on? Last time, this upholstery reeked of vindaloo for a week.

No, I have not finished, Miss Mountshaft. Furthermore, let us remember that it is I who supplied the gingerbread men for rehearsal teas. (...) "Blackmail" is an ugly word, Miss Mountshaft.

I've never been very comfortable with Ian and Gilly since they started dabbling in those tarot cards.

 One line that I'd never really noticed before (probably because you tend to concentrate on the four leads), but which made me laugh and laugh this time around, comes from Reginald Marsh's 'Sir'. He explains his vision of the graphic that he wants Tom to design for a trade exhibition: "I want people who visit this exhibition to get a picture of me, smiling benignly at them through... a laurel wreath, or something like that. I want them to feel, 'Here's a man we can trust!'. That's all I want."

 Something else I've never noticed before occurs in the final scene in the hotel dining room. The moment when Barbara pours Tom's dessert of green figs into his lap is rather rushed and doesn't ring particularly true, but something much funnier is happening in the backround where you can see John Scott Martin's waiter, laughing meanly at Tom's misfortune.

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.

A Comedy On This Day: The Good Life - The Weaker Sex? (18 April 1975)

(Margo is trying to give Barbara a new dress as a present)

Barbara: That's nice.

Margo: Yes, well, that's what I thought when I bought it. But I'm afraid it was a terrible mistake.

Barbara: Oooh - Leclerc. Jolly expensive mistake.

Margo: Well, that's not important. The point is, Barbara, I got it home, I put it on and I said to myself, 'Margo, that simply looks cheap and nasty'. So I wondered if you'd like it? 

 That dress is a good example of how everything can come together very well in a BBC sitcom in this period. The costume department have come up with a really good prop. The dress itself is a striking garment of scarlet chiffon, decorated in a rainbow of coloured spots. Its outlandish enough to look like a bad purchase, but designed enough to still look plausible as a high fashion purchase. Our never actually seeing either woman wear the dress helps this suitability. The viewer can only imagine what each might look like with it on, an appealing invitation to our imaginations. We do get the pleasure of Margo in several other costumes this episode, all of which feel dressy and eccentrically designed, but are also clearly well-made, helping to sell the authenticity of the dress to the viewer.

 Even from a distance of 43 years the other piece of information that we're given about the dress, that it cost £55 (£453.22 in 2018 money), feels comically just right. It certainly amuses Jerry, until he learns that Margo bought it with the joint account. This is the first series so we see rather less of Margo and Jerry than we do later on, but Penelope Keith's performance is already extraordinarily well judged and funny in every line. She makes every permutation of the situation - how Margo is oblivious to her condescension towards Barbara and certain of her convictions with Jerry - register to the viewer.

 And then there's another appealing payoff to the dress, when we finally do get to see it being worn - by Tom's new scarecrow.