The Movies
10 February 1975
The Movies is the first episode of Series 5, which, for both quantity and quality would have to be the one series of The Goodies most widely selected for preservation (should the dire need arise to keep one and only one). The Super Chaps are at their peak throughout. 1975 was, it’s fair to say, the year of The Goodies. On the back of The Funky Gibbon and other singles, they became improbable rock stars. They were in the public eye and at the peak of their comedic powers. Many of the episodes they produced during this period are near perfect (to the extent that there’s very little to say about them!).
When viewers first encountered The Movies, the first thing they’d have noticed—being viscerally slapped about the chops with it—was the new theme song. I personally prefer the original, then the slowed-down, funked-up version… but there’s no denying the appeal of this third rendition. It’s fast and frenetic, veritably rattling with confidence. Snippet after snippet are paraded from Series 1-4, like the funniest of lives flashing before one’s eyes—with the promise of heavenly excesses to come! This is the theme that most people associate with The Goodies. It would be used for the rest of the programme’s run (including, in watered-down form, the ITV series. This, more than anything, screams silly, zany fun.
(Which is a trifle unfair. The Goodies were indeed masters of slapstick visual comedy and throwaway gags, but their humour also encompassed the cerebral, the surreal, and the bitingly satirical.)
The Movies is a bona fide classic from start to finish:
- Graeme’s pocket movie camera (“Mind you, you have to wear the special trousers.”)
- The sublime script trim in which he whittles Macbeth down to one page and then, to assure Tim there’s no killing, tears off the top quarter… only to throw out the larger section!
- The outrageous outtakes reel that is ‘Macbath Meets Truffaut the Wonder Dog’
- Bill’s attempt to make a silent film by painting the entire set black and white (“Gorblimey! No wonder they went over to colour.”)
- Indeed, the entire last ten minutes, where Tim’s epic (“It is I, Sambo— Samson!”), Graeme’s Western and Bill’s silent comedy spill over into each other, as do cinematic effects and trickery into real life.
Without the halftime commercials, The Movies has a more cohesive progression, still upping the ante from concept to absurdity, but with less of a wild balancing act between the script’s two halves. First, we’re shown the lamentable state of the British film industry (Visconti’s drudgerous epic Death in Bognor; Bill: “Come on, you blighter. Die!!”)[1] Then the lads try their own hands at making a film, which turns out disastrously. Undeterred, they go their separate ways and produce utter chaos!
Notably, the Goodies have moved away from guest actors. There are guest characters (famous directors of the day, Chaplain’s tramp, Laurel and Hardy, et cetera), but the closest we come to name actors are Frank Lester (Macbeth) and Melita Clarke (Delilah):
Instead, the lads reserve the bulk of the humour—certainly the bulk of the lines—for themselves. This is their show, and no one’s going to tell them what to do![2] When THE END appears superimposed across their bickering efforts, they even take up the letters and biff each other with them!
A second THE END then rolls up the screen. The Goodies are carried away—as indeed they have been all along!
Jacob Edwards, 10 February 2025
Tweets:
[1] A reference to the two-hours-plus epic Death in Venice by Italian film director Luchino Visconti (who was 68 years old and unwell at the time The Movies came out; he died a year later).
[2] Which doesn’t mean they’re in charge. Note Tim’s Roman soldiers shouldering past him and knocking him down; Graeme’s posse shooting him in the backside; Bill’s troupe of black-and-white comics throwing their pies at him.
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