DVD Bits 
has alerted me to some good news: more of The Goodies is coming to DVD. The second DVD will contain the following episodes:
- Radio Goodies
- Bunfight at OK Tea Rooms
- Movies
- The End
- Punky Business
- South Africa
- Scoutrageous
- Come Dancing (Wicked Walzing)
The Goodies is one of those shows that deserves to be better known – it never seems to have made it into the States, and even in its original Britain it apparently is rarely aired. It has always been more popular here in Australia, because the ABC kept repeating it early in the evening, as a filler before the news (although I don’t recall seeing it on free-to-air TV in the last five or so years). For those who haven’t seen it, it centres on three characters named after the actors who played them: Tim Brooke-Taylor, the snooty upper class twit; Graeme Garden, the scientist; and Bill Oddie, the unkempt ruffian. Continuity between episodes was very weak, with only the personalities and some sets being consistent: each half hour would throw the characters into a different set of often surreal circumstances.While not of the quality of its near contemporary, Monty Python’s Flying Circus, at its best it was very funny and adventurous. It is almost unique amongst sitcoms for its very heavy use of slapstick humour, with many speeded-up chase scenes and prafalls. It always appealed to kids, but the best episodes were good enough to deserve an adult audience.
I actually think the best-of approach (as opposed to full season sets) is a good one for this show: it ran for more than a decade, and isn’t of consistently high enough quality to warrant purchase of the whole lot. The problem is, the selection of episodes on the first disk was haphazard, with only a couple of episodes really showing the show at its best. This second disk sounds more promising: the “Scoutrageous” episode (in which the Goodies, as Scouts, take on the Salvation Army, Navy and Air Force) is very good, as is “The End” (in which the Goodies are buried underground). And if the “Movies” episode is the silnet movies themed one, then my recollection is that’s a particualarly good episode also.
One final note: the show was notable for its heavy use of original songs written by Oddie, some of which were pretty good. Some – notably the theme song and the infuriatingly catchy “Funky Gibbon” – have made it onto CD. But many of the songs actually used on the show (as opposed to those they recorded as a novelty band) haven’t been released – notably Oddie’s best song, “Run” (although it was covered by Spiderbait a few years ago). I’d love the original Goodies version of “Run,” and find it bizarre that it wasn’t included amongst the mostly crap songs on the so-called best-of CD.