YMMV / The Goodies

• Animation Age Ghetto: Although not an animated series, it was very much like one in demeanour, meaning that it was played for children in Australia. Episodes like "Sex and Violence" were accordingly not shown there at all until several years after. This also led the BBC to label the series as a "kid's show" and then get annoyed about any "unsuitable" content in it, much to the trio's annoyance.
• Crosses the Line Twice: In “Black and White Beauty”, the trio get their hands on the eponymous horse, courtesy of an abusive owner who wants it to win the Grand National. As if this wasn’t darkly funny enough, they follow it up with Tim describing the horse’s traits before coming up with a name he quickly realises the problems of, making it hilarious.
• Germans Love David Hasselhoff:
  • While The Goodies is rarely repeated on The BBC after the series ended, simply because the BBC's main controller of the eighties didn't like them, The ABC in Australia repeated them extensively throughout the 1980s and 1990s, giving them a continuous Australian fan base since the show originally aired. Thanks to digital television, they're still going.
  • Even though the show only aired on some PBS stations in the US, "The Funky Gibbon" managed to climb to #79 on the Billboard Hot 100, thanks to support from Dr. Demento.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • The episode "Scatty Safari", where the Goodies add Rolf Harris to their "Star-Safari Park", describing Harris as "gregarious" and "often found with the young generation", is extremely uncomfortable in hindsight, given Harris was found guilty of several counts of paedophilia and sentenced to prison in 2014. Not to mention the Pied Piper sequence where the plague of Rolf Harrises are said to "[bite] the babies in their cradles". It could almost have been worse, as the Rolf Harrises in the episode are all played by actors, but the real Rolf Harris was actually disappointed that he wasn't asked to appear in it, as Bill assumed that Harris wouldn't want to due to how often the series mocked him, so didn't bother to ask. If Harris had been asked and agreed, the episode would likely have never seen the light of day again post-2014, and would probably have been missing from the otherwise series-spanning 2018 boxset.
  • A similar situation occurs in "The Stolen Musicians" the super villain who has kidnapped the Goodies tries to bully them into cooperating with him by threatening to lock them in a prison cell with Rolf Harris if they don't. The Goodies' reactions of abject horror at this threat seem uncanilly appropriate now, not to mention the Foreshadowing effect of the episode placing Harris in a prison cell to begin with.
  • The 1973 special "Superstar" has a sign at the Top of the Pops studio reading asking for "girls only. Must be over 16 and under 17 with big knockers". As if that wasn't icky enough, John Peel appears doing a Jimmy Savile impression.
  • On that note, the first episode, "Beefeaters", has Bill hallucinate the image of Saville, and his reason for wanting to be a disc jockey: "have hundreds of little groupie girls offering themselves to me."
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • Bill Oddie is now mainly known for formerly hosting Springwatch and being a devoted birdwatcher and environmentalist; at the beginning of "The End", he starts shooting at songbirds out of the window. In "Animals", he mows down pigeons with an Uzi. Though he was already slightly known for his birdwatching (The Goodies File has a spoof ornithology section by him); this was probably always intended as a Playing Against Type gag.
  • In "Gender Education" (a.k.a "Sex and Violence"), a radio station lambasts the Goodies for their supposedly obscene sex-ed film. He then says "And now... the shipping broadcast."
  • The 'Robinson's Paper' advert skit when you look at some modern adverts.
  • "Bunfight at the OK Tea Rooms", having a gold-rush type boom town when a reservoir of cream is found in Cornwall, now that there's a prospect of a 'Lithium-rush' in the same county.
  • It was a Running Gag the Goodies would like to receive O.B.E.s, Bill in 2003 and Tim and Graeme in 2011.
  • One of the gags in "Kung Fu Kapers" involved a martial arts technique of "attacking the nerve points" to induce a delayed reaction, effectively lightly tapping the opponent only for them to instantly and violently collapse a few seconds later. This episode aired 8 years before Fist of the North Star amped that same idea up to bloodier levels.
• Retroactive Recognition:
  • A lady from "Radio Goodies" is played by Brenda Cowling, who would later be best known for playing Mrs. Lipton in You Rang, M'Lord?.
  • Jack Dalton from "The Baddies" is played by Felix Bowness, who would later be best known for playing Fred Quilley in Hi-de-Hi!.
  • A waiter from "Farm Fresh Food" is played by Frank Thornton, who would later be best known for playing Captain Peacock in Are You Being Served?.
  • Major Cheeseburger from "Clown Virus" is played by John Bluthal, who would later be best known for playing Frank Pickle in The Vicar of Dibley.
  • Penelope Fay from "Wicked Waltzing" is played by June Whitfield, who would later be best known for playing June Fletcher in Happy Ever After, June Medford in Terry and June, and Mother in Absolutely Fabulous.
  • The Minister for Trade and Domestic Affairs from "Caught in the Act" is played by Mollie Sugden, who would later be best known for playing Mrs. Slocombe in Are You Being Served?.
  • A nurse from "Rock Goodies" is played by Vicki Michelle, who would later be best known for playing Yvette Carte-Blanche in 'Allo 'Allo!.
• Signature Scene:
  • The giant kitten climbing the Post Office Tower in "Kitten Kong".
  • The trio being chased by a giant Dougal from "Goodies Rule - Ok?".
  • Bill's clown trousers from "Clown Virus".
  • The Ecky-Thump contest from "Kung Fu Kapers".
• Unintentional Period Piece: The series just oozes The '70s, from the hair to the clothing to the events, topics and people satirised. It's been suggested that this is one of the reasons that, while it at the time rivalled and even arguably eclipsed Monty Python's Flying Circus in popularity, it's far less well known today, as it was much more contemporary than Python. Well, that and the BBC refusing to repeat it for years since it ended.
• Values Dissonance: The series featured some racial stereotypes that wouldn't be suitable to air today.
  • "Charity Bounce" crams a ton of these into about 60 seconds, as the Goodies' whirlwind world tour passes through South Africa, which was at the time still in the midst of apartheid:
    • The Goodies pass a road sign that says "Stay White".
    • The South Africans are shows using zebra crossings by jumping only on to the stripes that match their own skin color (i.e. the blacks only step on the black stripes, the whites step only on the white stripes.)
    • A South African man is shown playing a piano. All the white keys of the piano are on one end of the piano and all the black keys are at the other end. The man, who is white, is only playing the white keys.
    • The South Africa sequence features a guest character, Minion, who had previously been caught up in an explosion and was charred from head to toe. He gets stopped at a checkpoint by a South African cop who produces a card that is white on one side and black on the other; he holds the card next to Minion's face and compares his skin to first the white side, then the black side, and decides it matches the latter. At this point, the cop and all his colleagues start whaling on Minion with their clubs.
  • In one of their ad sequences the camera pans over a series of Asian men wearing outfits of various professions. The sequence is narrated: "If you need Mr. Lee-Fong the butcher, or Mr. Hong-Chi the dentist, or Mr. Lin-Chang the plumber...", etc., etc. All building to the punchline: "You can find them all in The Yellow Pages." After being shown this sketch as part of Channel 4's It Was Alright in the 1970s, Bill Oddie freely admitted that it was a cheap joke in the first place.
  • The scene in "The End" where the three of them find religion has Bill converting to Islam... with the aid of some shoe polish.
  • Finally, in 2022 (and too late for Tim), The Goodies are back on British TV again in a series re-run. The nostalgia channel which is screening them alongside things like The Benny Hill Show and Till Death Us Do Part considers it necessary to preface them with a warning advisory about "This series reflects the attitudes of its day" AND censor out some of the jokes it judges to be offensive.
• Vindicated by History:
  • The series was for a long time written off by many who dismissed it as a childish, dated Monty Python cash-in. The BBC's own notorious dislike of the series and refusal to release much of it on DVD for years also didn't help. However, with the release of The Complete BBC Series boxset, the series is now getting a much wider reappraisal and regaining some of the acclaim and success that it deserves.
  • Series 9 was widely dismissed at the time for being inferior to their BBC output and was pretty unsuccessful, which led to the series' final cancellation. However in recent years, and with the advent that, until 2018, it was the only complete series of the show to have a DVD release, its reputation has recovered somewhat, and although it's still seen as weaker than most of their BBC series, a lot of its elements, such as bringing back Bill's songs as incidental music and having the trio lose some of the Flanderisation and go back to being friends with each other, have been praised, as have episodes such as "Change Of Life" which examines and satirises the Goodies' own increasing age, and "Football Crazy" which is generally considered one of the strongest series 9 episodes.
• What Do You Mean, It's Not for Kids?: A source of great fustration for the team. The concentration of cartoon like visual humour led the BBC to labelling the series as a children's show, and then getting uptight about any 'unsuitable' material.

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