It's time to introduce Goodpod Sweetcast

Sam Whyte and I are moving onto podcast fields new, with a new, extremely granular examination of the most messed-up sitcom ever made. So here's a primer.

In some respects, it feel as though all roads have been leading to this moment. I started podcasting with Ed Carter in 2014. I can’t say exactly how many I’ve recorded, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it was more than 600, and maybe many more. I have honestly lost count.

But this is the big one. This is the one that has been idly threatened in private conversations over more than a decade between me and more than one other person, and now the moment has arrived. It’s time to finally say what needs to be said about Goodnight Sweetheart.

Now, I have reason to believe that one or two of the people listening to this podcast may even be under the age of forty - I’ve checked the numbers, and that’s not a million miles from the truth - so it’s probably only right that I should explain why a 32-year-old sitcom starring Only Fools & Horses sidekick Nicholas Lyndhurst should hold quite such an over-sized place in my psyche.

The only way in which I can explain this is by saying that Goodnight Sweetheart is the most fucked up sitcom ever produced (and yes, yes I did have to almost physically restrain myself from saying, “ladies present!” immediately after using the fuck word, there).

I mean, there have been worse. Heil Honey, I’m Home is a real thing. Turn-on, quite possibly the worst TV comedy show ever made (although this was a sketch show rather than a sitcom), was considered lost media for more than half a century and then found.

But Heil Honey I’m Home was pulled after just one episode, and was being shown on a small satellite channel that was chasing headlines. Turn-On - a show about which I also have a fair bit to say, though not sixty podcasts’ worth, primarily because there were only two episodes of it, which have only been found in the last couple of years - was a massive miscalculation which was pulled from the air after one episode.

But that wasn’t the case, with Goodnight Sweetheart. It’s not bad. It’s weird. And then it gets weird and bad. Over 59 episodes, it was on BBC1, prime-time, for six goddam years. It is a television show about which I have so much to say that it’s almost difficult to know where to start, and it was all considered completely normal by society in a broader sense at its time of broadcast.

So let’s start with the basic premise. Gary Sparrow is a television repair man who lives on a starter honme estate with his ambitious and upwardly mobile wife Yvonne, who works in Human Resources and is studying on the OU. While trying to find a job, Sparrow walks down a passage in Stepney, East London, and through a time-portal into 1940, a few weeks into the Blitz.

And then it all goes off.

Gary goes into the pub to ask directions, meets the locals, and starts making up somewhat ridiculous lies to cover the fact that they’re all suspicious of him. But he really fancies the barmaid, so he keeps on returning until he’s in a relationship with one woman in the 1940s and one in the 1990s. To put it another way, he’s a time-travelling bigamist.

Over 59 episodes the show plays out against the background of the Second World War, ending on VE Day in 1945. It’s also worth pointing out that, half-way through the show’s run, both of the actresses playing the female lead roles quit and had to be replaced. Throughout this time, Gary gets into scrapes involving celebrities of the era - don’t worry, we’ll be coming back to this in granular detail - and explores the complexities of time travel. Well… kinda.

I should point out that this is a show with which I am already more than familiar, though my co-host Sam Whyte is on her first run-through. I’ve think that, I’ve probably seen it all the way through from start to finish twice, though I’ve also probably watched the first episode twenty times. I did manage to fairly succinctly distil my feelings on it in two replies on Bluesky on the subject earlier in the week.

I am kind of low key dreading it, because the premise is weird, the two of the most important characters completely change their appearance, and then there's this lengthy tail-off in which they're having to keep these increasingly stupid plot holes from opening up. It may tip me over the edge.

Well the thing is, I do low key love it. I always find Lyndhurst engaging, and the fucked-upness of it has an appeal to me. I've seen it all, but does raise way more questions than it could ever answer and I'm not sure I should be talking about it for half an hour to an hour for the next 36 weeks.

I didn’t know it was 59 at time. Oh well. As I write these words, I still haven’t told her, either. Oops. Sorry this is how you find out, Sam. (It would be complete serendipity if this podcast’s female lead quit halfway through and was replaced by someone who looked a bit like her, but wasn’t as good and didn't feel right.)

I the interests of research only, I have started watching it from the beginning again. I had questions by the end of the opening titles to the first episode. I’m now five episodes into the second series and hoooooo you can already feel it just starting to creak. I am, and there’s no other way of putting this, rubbing my hands with glee at the bollocks and bullshit to come.

The first episode of this new podcast will be out next week. Come join us as we face Goodnight Sweetheart and walk backwards into hell.