All 4 seasons and specials. The Good Life is a British sitcom produced by the BBC that ran from 1975 to 1978. It was written by Bob Larbey and John Esmonde. In 2004, it came 9th in Britain's Best Sitcom. In the United States, it aired on various PBS stations under the title Good Neighbors.


    Richard Briers — Tom Good
    Felicity Kendal — Barbara Good
    Penelope Keith — Margo Leadbetter (née Sturgess)
    Paul Eddington — Jeremy "Jerry" Leadbetter
    Reginald Marsh — Andrew/Sir
    Moyra Fraser — Felicity, Sir's wife (series 1)


The Good Life was written by John Esmonde and Bob Larbey for Richard Briers,[1] the only cast member with a previously established high profile. Larbey and Esmonde were inspired by Larbey's 40th birthday, which they thought a milestone in most people's lives.[1] They made the characters friends rather than enemies, creating comedy as their friendship was tried to its limit.

Peter Bowles was originally cast to play the role of Jerry, but was unavailable.[1] He later starred opposite Penelope Keith in To the Manor Born. Hannah Gordon was thought of to play Barbara, but she'd recently played a similar role in the BBC sitcom My Wife Next Door. Esmonde and Larbey chose Felicity Kendal and Penelope Keith after seeing them on stage together in The Norman Conquests. The location filming was in the North London suburb of Northwood, although the series was set in Surbiton, southwest London. The producers searched extensively for a suitable pair of houses, eventually chancing on Kewferry Road, Northwood (Google street view [1], the Leadbetters' house to the left).[2] The grounds of the Goods' house were returned to their prior state after filming of each series' inserts, and livestock removed overnight.

On his 40th birthday, Tom Good is no longer able to take his job seriously and gives up work as a draughtsman for a company that makes plastic toys for breakfast cereal packets. Their house is paid for so he and his wife Barbara adopt a sustainable, simple and self-sufficient lifestyle while staying in their home in The Avenue, Surbiton. They turn their front and back gardens into allotments, growing soft fruit and vegetables. They introduce chickens, pigs (Pinky and Perky), a goat (Geraldine) and a cockerel (Lenin). They generate their own electricity, using methane from animal waste, and attempt to make their own clothes. They sell or barter surplus crops for essentials they cannot make themselves. They cut their monetary requirements to the minimum with varying success.

Their actions horrify their kindly but conventional neighbours, Margo and Jerry Leadbetter. Margo and Jerry were intended to be minor characters, but their relationship with one another and the Goods became an essential element. Under the influence of the Goods' homemade wine, called "peapod burgundy", the strength of which becomes a running joke, their intermingled attractions for one another become apparent. Both couples are childless.