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Originally Published August 28th, 2006
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After five years playing the always-flustered Tony Nelson on I Dream of Jeannie and eight years before his lengthy turn as the conniving J.R. Ewing on Dallas, Larry Hagman somehow found the time to star in this short-lived sitcom. He appeared alongside Donna Mills (who would later co-star in Knots Landing, a spin-off of Dallas) as a married couple who decide to chase the good life.
Larry Hagman and Donna Mills starred in The Good Life as Albert and Jane Miller, a married couple sick of the plodding normality of their middle-class lifestyle. The half-hour sitcom holds the distinction of being picked up by a network and then having its pilot episode broadcast on television.
Typically, if a network wants to gauge viewer response to a pilot before ordering it to series, they will air the pilot, wait for reviews and Nielsen ratings, and then make a decision. In the case of The Good Life, however, NBC added the series to its schedule and then broadcast the pilot several weeks later.
The unusual manner in which The Good Life made NBC's schedule may have had something to do with the impending implementation of the F.C.C.'s prime-time access rule, which forced the networks to relinquish a half-hour of programming time each night of the week.
During the first few months of 1971 -- even as they were working on their 1971-1972 schedules -- the networks struggled over which half-hour to give up, 7:30-8PM or 10:30-11PM. Eventually, all three networks settled on broadcasting from 8-11PM each evening, except for Tuesday and Sunday, from 7:30-10:30PM, and the occasional half-hour returned to affiliates in exchange for an extra half-hour on another night.
It is also possible that NBC simply had faith in The Good Life as a series and didn't feel it was necessary to test the pilot. Whatever the reason, when NBC began showing an early version of its 1971-1972 schedule in early March of 1971, The Good Life was scheduled for the 7:30-8PM timeslot on Sundays [1]. That was before the decision to start broadcasting on Saturdays at 8PM. The final schedule placed The Good Life at 8:30PM following another new sitcom, The Partners [2].
On Monday, March 22nd, 1971 NBC aired the pilot to The Good Life as part of "Triple Play," a ninety-minute World Premiere Movie made up of three comedy pilots. Only The Good Life was actually picked up. The others, Inside O.U.T. with Bill Daily and Is There a Doctor in the House? with William Windhom and Rosemary Forsyth, never made it past the pilot stage. Dan Rowan and Dick Martin hosted the special, allowing it to run for two hours.
"Triple Play" was repeated on Monday, August 23rd, two weeks before the series officially premiered on Saturday, September 18th, 1971. The Good Life was based on the novel by Douglass Wallop (better known for writing the novel The Year the Yankees Lost the Pennant, which became the award-winning play Damn Yankees!) the half-hour sitcom was a Lorimar/Humble and Screen Gems production.
Television critics were split on The Good Life, with some thinking it was a solid sitcom and others dismissing it as pedestrian. Harry Harris of The Philadelphia Inquirer praised stars Larry Hagman and Donna Mills, writing that the show had "more promising principals than premise" [3]. Barbara Zuanich of The Los Angeles Herald Examiner was more positive, calling the series "fast, snappy and well-played."
Likewise, The San Diego Union's Don Freeman wrote that The Good Life was a "fairly amusing little comedy that might be the year's sleeper." And Judith Martin of The Washington Post argued that series "may not be Noel Coward, but for television situation comedy it is amusing."
On the negative side was Don Page of The Los Angeles Times, who wrote that The Good Life "is full of cutesy dialogue and gets a lot of mileage out of studio backlot sets and keeps going around in circles with predictable results." The series was among several that John J. O'Connor of The New York Times called "exceptionally bad" [4].
The Chicago Tribune's Clarence Petersen seemed somewhere in the middle, stating that "the debut wasn't overloaded with laughs, but I've never seen so many comedic crisis [...] packed into a single 30-minute episode" [5].
Joining Larry Hagman and Donna Mills in The Good Life was David Wayne as Charles Dutton, the millionaire head of Dutton Industries, the man who hired Albert and Jane as butler and maid for his household. Living with Charles were his son, Nick (played Danny Goldman) and his sister, Grace (played by Hermione Baddeley).
Nick was aware that Albert and Jane weren't actually very good as butler and maid and did whatever he could to help them with the charade. Nick was also something of a political activist (a hippie, if you will) although compared to his stuffy father and aunt anyone would be considered radical.
Grace Dutton, stuffier even than her brother, was never very comfortable with Albert and Jane. She complained bitterly about them and tried everything she could think of to get them fired. But, thankfully, Dutton never listened. Still, the question remained, why would a comfortably middle-class couple want to work as a butler and a maid? Their plan was simple: find an easy job with a rich family, drive the occasional car and rinse the occasional dish, and otherwise live off the wealth off their employer.
So, Albert quits his job as a stockbroker and the two hire themselves out to a wealthy businessman. Charles Dutton seemed like the perfect employer. He provided the Millers with a nice little cottage of their own, gave them free reign of his estate -- pool, tennis court, etc -- and allowed them the use of his fancy cars. It truly was the good life.
View a Scene from The Good Life
Or it would have been if Albert wasn't so incredibly inept (at least he had Jane to keep tabs on him most of the time). In the series opener, for example, Albert was charged with selling a fancy, but used, Rolls-Royce. If he manages to get more than its worth, Dutton will let him keep the extra. What does Albert do? He allows a con artist to "test drive" the car -- in other words, it gets stolen.
In another episode, Albert letting an old friend stay in the Dutton estate, claming it is actually his. The problem? The Duttons, who were on vacation, return home early. The only way Albert's friend will leave is if Albert can beat him in chess. Another episode also involved the Duttons on vacation: Albert wants to tag along (with Jane) and tries to convince the Duttons to travel to the Riviera. Instead, they decide to head to a mountain cabin, leading Albert to try to scare them into leaving.
Other episodes saw Albert "lending" his wife to Nick as a date for a fancy high-society event, Albert breaking his leg and then hiring his own -- and better -- replacement, Albert convincing Dutton to retire and then regretting it, and Albert allowing criminals access to the Dutton restate while trying to have a home security system installed.
The Good Life aired on Saturdays opposite Funny Face on CBS and the first half-hour of The ABC Movie of the Weekend (on ABC, of course). The premiere episode tied at 51st with the debut of NBC's The Jimmy Stewart Show in the Nielsen rankings for the week of September 13th through September 19th [6]. The following week, The Good Life again ranked below 50th place [7].
The series stayed in the bottom of the Nielsen charts as the season continued [8]. In early November, NBC cancelled The Good Life, along with The Partners, Sarge, The Funny Side and The D.A. [9]. The final episode, the fifteenth, aired on January 8th, 1972. The following week NBC premiered the pilot movie of its new drama series Emergency, which would take over the 8-9PM timeslot starting January 22nd, 1972.
Aside from the pair of famous names attached to this series, The Good Life's main claim to fame is its connection to a British series also called The Good Life. When the British series was imported to the United States in the mid-1970s, the title was changed to Good Neighbors to avoid confusion with the earlier show.
The opening theme song to The Good Life, sung by Tony Orlando and Dawn, was a slight reworking of a classic Tony Bennett tune, also called "The Good Life."
Listen to the Opening Theme to The Good Life
The closing theme was a instrumental version of the opening theme.
Listen to the Closing Theme to The Good Life
Our apologies for the poor quality of the opening theme song; it was recorded off the air using a reel-to-reel recorder way back in 1971 before being transferred to a cassette tape and finally a computer!
Works Cited:
1 "The games TV networks play." Broadcasting. 8 Mar. 1971: 42-44.
2 "NBC Will Add 8 Shows In the Fall and Chase ABC's Tuesday Rating." Wall Street Journal. 10 Mar. 1971: 8.
3 Unless noted, all quotes from "It's anyone's guess - and they're all guessing." Broadcasting. 27 Sep. 1971: 12-19.
4 O'Connor, John J. "TV: New Shows Escapist--And Dull." New York Times. 29 Sep. 1971: 66.
5 Petersen, Clarence. "Another Winner for Van Dyke?" Chicago Tribune. 20 Sep. 1971: A17.
6 Petersen, Clarence. "Ratings Put 5 New Series in Top 20." Chicago Tribune. 28 Sep. 1971: B13.
7 "The ratings race: predictable results." Broadcasting. 11 Oct. 1971: 36.
8 For example, according to Broadcasting, the October 9th episode of The Good Guys was "at the tail-end" of the Nielsen chart for the week October 4th through October 10th (25 Oct. 1971, 56).
9 Gent, George. "N.B.C. Will Scrap 5 New TV Programs in January." New York Times. 10 Nov. 1971: 94.
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