Kevin Warnock

My brother Andrew and his wife Krista gave me a simply wonderful Christmas gift 8 days ago. I can’t recall ever getting a more moving Christmas gift from anyone. Andrew bought me a paint set about 13 years ago, and that was a great gift in that it got me back into painting, which I hadn’t done since I was a child. And while I love to paint, and have decorated my house with my work, the paint set wasn’t as deeply important as what Andrew and Krista gave me this year. The special gift?

Good Neighbors DVD Box

They got me the 1970s BBC Television series on DVD originally titled The Good Life. The series has been renamed Good Neighbors on the DVD packaging, but the video images themselves use the original title. The 4 disc set covers the complete 3 season run of the show.

Here’s the series summary from the back cover of the DVD boxed set:

“Good Neighbors is considered on of the best British sitcoms ever by critics and audiences alike and took North America by storm when it premiered here on PBS.

Tired of the rat race and looking for more from life, Tom Good decides to quit his job and become self-sufficient… all without leaving his cozy suburban home. His wife, Barbara, agrees to his outlandish plan, and without a second thought they’ve dug up their well-laid lawn and turned it into a vegetable plot. A goat, pigs, and chickens soon follow.

Their best friends and neighbors, Margo and Jerry Leadbetter, think they’ve gone mad, especially Margo, the ultimate middle-clas suburban snob. Can the Goods really live off the land in the London suburbs? Can the Leadbetters stand it if they do?”

I find this show so meaningful because I want to do what the Goods do in this show! I am advertising for housemates right now that want to raise chickens, goats and vegetables right in San Francisco. I hope to raise all the food we need to eat one day, although that’s a tall order and one that almost certainly can’t be met. But we may be able to get close, except for items like spices, rice, tea, tropical fruit and industrial products like soda and chocolate chips.

I don’t want to forgo outside income like the Goods do, however. The Goods barter and sell some of their crops to make the cash they need to pay their property taxes. They need no money for utilities since they turned them all off. They have a methane digester to convert the goat manure to methane gas, which they burn in a basement electrical generator to power their lights. They bartered their toaster and hair dryer for a rusty old wood fired kitchen range. They get their firewood by scouring the neighborhood for diseased fallen trees, which they roll back home in pieces on an old baby carriage turned wagon.

I don’t want to give away the whole series in this post, so I’ll leave now with just these titalating highlights. I’ll write episode reviews from time to time, to cover what happens in more detail. I’ve only watched less than half the series, but it’s clear that the self-sufficient money poor couple is much ‘richer’ than the nominally rich couple next door. Money doesn’t buy happiness rings through the series in numerous profound scenarios. I’ve tried to buy happiness before and I know it can’t be done, so this show resonates with me more than most. It’s just so charming, captivating, delightful and sweet that you should login to Netflix right now and start watching it on demand.

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