The Return of the Good Life

14:19 17 November 2010

To celebrate the 35th anniversary of the classic BBC comedy The Good Life, Giles Coren and Sue Perkins have stepped back in time to 1975 to try their hand at becoming self-sufficient and see if it really is possible to live "the good life".

When the classic sitcom first hit British screens, self sufficiency was the goal of an eccentric few. Fast forward 35 years and Tom and Barbara Good's determination to grow their own and conserve energy has never seemed so fashionable.

Inspiring themselves with archive clips of the comedy, Giles and Sue try to recreate the Good's world in an ordinary suburban street – from growing vegetables in the garden and grazing goats in the local park, to building a methane generator to supply their electricity.

While seeking advice from experts when needed, most of the time the intrepid couple will try to find their own answers to everything from dealing with carrot blight to how to treat a constipated pig

But it's not all wellies and manure. Just as neighbours Margo and Jerry's affluent consumerism provided the perfect foil to their neighbour's earnest experiment in self-sufficiency, Sue and Giles get the opportunity to try out a more mainstream Seventies lifestyle in an attempt to understand just what it was that the Goods were kicking against.

See the final episode of Giles and Sue Live the Good Life Monday 22 November at 9pm on BBC Two or catch up through BBC iPlayer.

Sue talks about the show and her other projects in the video below:

%%youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YWqN5jEW61w