I am, and always have been, a Goodies fan. It is without doubt one of the best TV series ever made, and the BBC just won't do anything about properly re-releasing it. In an age when every piece of televisual and cinematic drivel winds up on video and DVD, something actually really good continues to elude us. I was happy to see this get linked on aus.culture.gothic, therefore, or at least I was until I looked at it in detail. At first I thought "cool, the BBC have finally pulled their fingers out and are going to release the whole thing"... then I looked at the contents and lo, for it was just a highlights collection.

In the past the BBC couldn't be bothered to issue more than three tapes of The Goodies, one containing The Goodies and the Beanstalk on its own and the others holding three episodes each. Calling it a token effort would be an insult to token efforts everywhere. And let's face it, this isn't much better. The highlights are high indeed, to be sure—"Earthanasia" has to be one of the best half-hours of television ever made by anyone anywhere—but still. And if the comments on the DVD at the Goodies site I linked to are accurate, the Australian edition (when it appears) is apparently going to be markedly inferior to the British one.

Sheer goddamn laziness is all it is.