The Goodies-The Final Episodes (1982)

This review is sponsored by

BUY IT

General		Extras
Category	Comedy	None
Rating
Year Of Production	1982
Running Time	175:00
RSDL / Flipper	Dual Layered	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	4	Directed By	John Howard Davies Jim Franklin Bob Spiers
Studio Distributor	London Weekend TV Roadshow Home Entertainment	Starring	Tim Brooke-Taylor Graeme Garden Bill Oddie Erik Chitty David Rappaport Patrick Moore Corbet Woodall Roland MacLeod Jane Asher
Case	Amaray-Transparent-S/C-Dual
RPI	$19.95	Music	Bill Oddie

     As a kid growing up in the seventies and early eighties in Australia, six o'clock on the ABC was time for The Goodies, always one of my favourite shows. Those episodes were the ones made for the BBC, over eight series between 1970 and 1980. They were then regularly repeated both here and in the UK. Once their run on the BBC finished in 1980, due to budget problems, The Goodies (Graeme Garden, Tim Brooke-Taylor & Bill Oddie) made one extra series of 7 episodes for ITV in 1981/2. Those are the episodes collected here and generally speaking will not be the ones remembered by Australian audiences. I believe they were shown on Channel Ten at some point but were all new to me.

     The series starts with a Christmas special, called Snow White 2, which is more than a little bizarre and not overly good. The six episodes of the regular series are generally better but probably not up to the quality of the classic BBC episodes. Football Crazy was a highlight for me with Bill playing a football hooligan and Tim the policeman charged with reducing crowd violence. The others contain some amusing ideas and are certainly worth watching for fans of the show.

     It is good to see these episodes get a local release, however, this is not the place to introduce new people to The Goodies brand of English humour.

Video

     The video quality is pretty ordinary but reasonable considering the age and source of the material.

     The feature is presented in a 1.33:1 aspect ratio which is the original aspect ratio.

     The picture was quite soft in general terms with the Christmas special being the worst. Shadow detail was ordinary.

     The colour is decent but there is cross-colourization and colour bleeding throughout. The picture during the Christmas special is overly bright meaning that faces lose definition.

     Artefacts (which are worse on the Christmas special) include specks and flecks, lots of digital noise & evidence of DNR, grain, macro-blocking and some aliasing.

     There are no subtitles.

     There is no obvious layer change.

Video Ratings Summary

Sharpness
Shadow Detail
Colour
Grain/Pixelization
Film-To-Video Artefacts
Film Artefacts
Overall

Audio

     The audio quality is fine.

     This disc contains an English soundtrack in Dolby Digital 2.0 mono.

     Dialogue was mostly easy to hear and understand.

     The surround speakers and subwoofer were not used.

Audio Ratings Summary

Dialogue
Audio Sync
Clicks/Pops/Dropouts
Surround Channel Use
Subwoofer
Overall

Menu

    The menu featured music.

    This series is available in the UK in a set called The Complete LWT series. It includes copious extras in addition to the episodes so is the choice for collectors.

    The video quality is pretty ordinary.

    The audio quality is fine.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall