Seventies TV: The Good Life (US: Good Neighbors)
My viewing of 1970s TV shows has so far completely missed the remarkable phenomenon of self-sufficiency & the allied desire to escape from the 'rat race'. This show perhaps both displays it & is also phenomenally popular: 'The Good Life is a British sitcom, produced by BBC television. It ran from 1975 to 1978 and was written by Bob Larbey and John Esmonde. Opening with the midlife crisis faced by Tom Good, a 40-year-old London plastics designer, it relates the joys and miseries he and his wife Barbara experience when they attempt to escape modern commercial living by "becoming totally self-sufficient" in their home in Surbiton. 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.' ( http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Good_Life_(1975_TV_series) ) As a sit-com the show reflected a part of the culture of the time, another strange thing about the 1970s. On the one hand...