Bob Larbey wrote domestic comedy in which people could be fond of one another and still have something worth arguing about. We admire his patience with difficult characters, though The Good Life sometimes takes that patience too far.
Fi1m perspective
In The Good Life (1975), Tom Good can make self-sufficiency sound appealing and then make us object to the way he pursues it. Bob Larbey and his co-writer John Esmonde allow both responses, which gives their comedy something worth watching beyond the practical difficulties. We laughed at the fuss these people made, then found ourselves taking their disagreements about comfort and independence seriously. The writing leaves us room to be irritated without treating the wish for a different life as foolish.
Larbey and Esmonde were submitting sketches in the early 1960s and continued writing together into the mid-1990s. Larbey also wrote alone: A Fine Romance (1981), starring Judi Dench, was his first major solo series. He and Esmonde reunited with Richard Briers for Ever Decreasing Circles (1984), while As Time Goes By (1992) gave Larbey another solo series with Dench. The solo work did not put an end to the partnership. His interest in domestic settings and dialogue drawn from observed speech gave these different collaborations something in common.
The four leads are crucial to The Good Life, but the scripts give them disagreements that cannot be settled simply by exposing one person as an idiot. An attractive idea can belong to an unreasonable person; Larbey and Esmonde make that a continuing source of comedy. They also leave space for affection when everyone is being difficult. Without that, the programme’s practical business could become a weekly lesson in perseverance, with the audience expected to applaud the effort.
But warmth sometimes becomes an excuse. The programme forgives Tom more readily than we do, and that makes its handling of the disagreements less fair than it otherwise seems. Larbey’s gentleness can also disappoint anyone waiting for a brisk succession of punchlines. We would not ask him to make the characters crueller, only to give their objections to Tom a little more weight. Start with The Good Life, and reserve the right to side against him.
Biography
Bob Larbey was a British television comedy writer, best known for his long partnership with John Esmonde. Together they created and wrote a series of popular sitcoms from the late 1960s to the 1990s, including Please Sir! (1968), The Good Life (1975–1978), Get Some In! (1975–1978), Ever Decreasing Circles (1984–1987) and Brush Strokes (1986–1991).
Larbey also wrote solo series such as A Fine Romance (1981–1984) and As Time Goes By (1992–2005). He began his career contributing sketches to radio and television before the partnership's breakthrough with Please Sir!. Larbey was born in London in 1934 and died there in 2014. He was married to Patricia Marshall, who died in 2006; they had one son.
