History Series / TheGoodLife

* AccidentalMisnaming: 'Sir' seems convinced that Tom's name is 'Tim', and everyone is either too polite of too obsequious to correct. The few attempts made to correct him just result in confusion, as 'Sir' asks who 'Tom' is.

* {{Suburbia}}: It's set in Surbiton. Which Americans will be astonished to learn is a real place.

Their actions horrify their conventional, and conventionally materialistic, next-door neighbors, Margo and Jerry Leadbetter. Well, they horrify Margo. Tom's friend and former colleague Jerry is mostly just bemused. HilarityEnsues. Notable for being a sitcom about Sustainability before sustainability was a common topic of discussion.

BritCom about a married couple (Tom and Barbara Good) who decide to give up the rat race and become completely self-sufficient. On his 40th birthday, Tom Good gives up his job as a draughtsman in a company that makes plastic toys for boxes of breakfast cereal. Their house is paid for, so he and his wife decide to live a sustainable, simple and self-sufficient lifestyle while staying in their home in Surbiton. They dig up their gardens and convert them into allotments, growing fruit and vegetables. They buy chickens, pigs, a goat and a rooster. The Goods generate their own electricity, attempt to make their own clothes, and barter for essentials which they cannot make themselves.

->''"[[Music/WolfgangAmadeusMozart Mozart]] and [[Music/FelixMendelssohn]] were dead by forty. Why aren't you?"''

Came ninth in ''Series/BritainsBestSitcom''.

Known as ''Good Neighbors'' in the US because Creator/{{NBC}} had an unrelated one season series called "The Good Life" a couple years before.

* ShoutOutThemeNaming: WesternAnimation/TomAndJerry

* EpicFail: Tom tries to shoot a chicken with an air pistol. He misses from six inches away.

* {{Suburbia}}: It's set in Surbiton.

** "The Happy Event": When their sow gives birth to a runt, Tom is all for letting it die because that's what you do with runs. Barbara is not happy with how "[his] efficiency has become [his] god" and the Leadbetters are disgusted with the callousness. Ends up with an emergency run to the hospital for some oxygen, with the help of a constable.

Known as ''GoodNeighbors'' in the US because Creator/{{NBC}} had an unrelated one season series called "The Good Life" a couple years before.

* MayDecemberRomance: Although Paul Eddington (Jerry) was thirteen years older than Penelope Keith (Margo), in-show it was Tom and Barbara who usually gave off this vibe. Clues given in the show make it about a ten-year split between them. In one episode, Tom talks about how they moved into the house "a week before they were married" ten years ago. Tom and Jerry, roughly the same age, began at JJM at the same time at this point. In the episode with the two hippie kids, Tom asks Barbara what she was doing "when she was that age" (the hippie girl was early 20ish) and she responded that she was "waiting for some bloke [Tom] to call me back." While they may have dated a while before they married, it appears that Barbara was at least early 20s while Tom was at least 30 or very near that age.

* LawOfInverseFertility: Subverted; both couples have active sex lives, and neither has or desires children. In one episode Jerry comments sardonically that he and Margo use so much protection they barely touch.

** Barbara's first attempts to barter to [[PizzaBoySpecialDelivery pay the window-cleaner's bill]] turn into this, partly because of the recent success of ''[[AwfulBritishSexComedy Confessions of a Window-Cleaner]]'' and similar films. In this case, [[spoiler: the milkman is so abashed by his mistake he leaves without taking payment... and ''then'' Barbara realises what he must have thought she was suggesting.]]

* StealthPun: The two male leads are called WesternAnimation/TomAndJerry. This is never mentioned in the show.

* HomemadeSweaterFromHell: Traditional version in the Christmas Special (natch) but the Goods have a habit of wearing their ''own'' home-made clothes as well.

* ShoutOutThemeNaming: WesternAnimation/TomAndJerry, natch.

* MayDecemberRomance: Although Jerry's actor was thirteen years older than Margo's, in-show it was Tom and Barbara who usually gave off this vibe.
** Clues given in the show make it about a ten-year split between Tom Good and Barbara. In one episode, Tom talks about how they moved into the house "a week before they were married" ten years ago. Tom and Jerry, roughly the same age, began at JJM at the same time at this point. In the episode with the two hippie kids, Tom asks Barbara what she was doing "when she was that age" (the hippie girl was early 20ish) and she responded that she was "waiting for some bloke [Tom] to call me back." While they may have dated a while before they married, it appears that Barbara was at least early 20s while Tom was at least 30 or very near that age.

-->'''Tom:''' I know, but I thought that song came from "West Side Story".

* SitCom

* {{UST}}: Jerry and Barbara, which they're both aware of but never impacts on their [[HappilyMarried happy marriages]]; Tom and Margo to a lesser extent. Face it, if it wasn't for Margo's sensibilities the foursome would have been swinging like monkeys.

* WhatTheHellHero: Barbara and Jerry each give one to Tom for his complete dismissal of Barbara's feelings in "The Last Posh Frock". After Tom gave her a big schpiel about how he didn't care if she was unglamorous and then fawned all over her ''very'' glamorous school friend, she tears into him for dismissing her feelings as silly and "acting like a woman". When Tom goes to Jerry for some "women eh" sympathy he gets a sharp lecture instead and is chased home by Jerry's signature laugh.

* BlackmailIsSuchAnUglyWord: Margo says almost exactly this line (minus "such") to her choir mistress in the series 1 episode "The Pagan Rite".

* HypocriticalHumor: A staple. Often it will be Barbara or Tom dismissing the other's anger / frustration, a few pertinent lines of dialogue, and then becoming just as outraged.

* MobiusNeighbourhood: Other members of the neighbourhood are occasionally mentioned, but we never seem to meet the next-door neighbours on the other side of the Goods' house--in one episode the house is explicitly up for sale, then an artist named Mrs. Weaver moves in, and later moves out.

* CatchPhrase: "Thank you very much, Jerry!" "Jerry... the chequebook!"

* EarthMother: Barbara Good, who is frequently an UnkemptBeauty

* MobiusNeighbourhood: Other members of the neighbourhood are occasionally mentioned, but we never seem to meet the next-door neighbours on the other side of the Goods' house, despite them presumably being just as inconvenienced by their lifestyle as the Leadbetters are.

* NoodleIncident: The amateur production of ''TheSoundOfMusic''. Margo prepares for it for a few episodes and eventually we see her getting ready to perform. The episode cuts directly to Tom, Barbara and Jerry discussing what transpired. It begins with Tom asking, "That was ''The Sound of Music'' we saw wasn't it?" and goes downhill from there.

* SheCleansUpNicely: Barbara, especially in "The Last Posh Frock" from Series 3.

* YesMan: Jerry is a cheerfully unapologetic example; in one episode as he's about to call up his boss on the phone and grovel, he whips out a comb and works over his hair.

* EarthMother: Barbara Good's [[GroundForce Dimmock]]-like ability to grow things whilst radiating earthy sexuality. Her motherly nurturing of the other characters. Occasionally Margo has flashes of an EM personality too.

* InnocentInnuendo: Barbara's first attempts to barter to [[PizzaBoySpecialDelivery pay the window-cleaner's bill]] turn into this, partly because of the recent success of ''[[AwfulBritishSexComedy Confessions of a Window-Cleaner]]'' and similar films. In this case, [[spoiler: the milkman is so abashed by his mistake he leaves without taking payment... and ''then'' Barbara realises what he must have thought she was suggesting.]]

* JerkWithAHeartOfGold: Margo. She may be stuck-up, but she isn't afraid to apologise when she's wrong.

* PunnyName: A subtle one, but the two main couples are the '''Good'''s and the Lead'''better'''s. And of course, [[EpunymousTitle the Goods are living "the good life"]] while earning the derision of their "betters".

* ThemeNaming: The '''Good'''s and the Lead'''better'''s.