The legacy of The Good Life

The Good Life captured the public’s imagination when it first aired in 1975. On Country Smallholding’s 45th birthday, Jeremy Hobson looks at this and other programmes with a self-sufficiency slant that have captivated urban and rural dwellers alike over nearly half a century

-  Jeremy Hobson

John Seymour’s books Self- Sufficiency and The Complete Book of Self-Sufficiency were huge bestsellers during the 1970s, inspiring a new generation to down-shift to a different way of life. But, as popular as the idea of a smallholding enterprise was already proving to be, it was really the arrival in 1975 of the BBC’s The Good Life, starring Richard Briers, Felicity Kendal, Penelope Keith and Paul Eddington, that brought self-sufficiency to the attention of the masses. At its peak, the programme attracted 18 million viewers.

In part inspired by the increased interest in green issues, although it focused on the potential problems (and comedy element) of self-sufficiency, writers John Esmonde and Bob Larbey also used The Good Life as a platform from which to poke fun at middle-class values — hence it is set in sunny Surbiton in southwest London rather than a rural idyll. In a 2011 interview, producer John Howard Davies stated that he believed one reason for the success of the series was because it featured “two people trying to practice self-sufficiency in a bad place”.