| "Gender Education" | |
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| The Goodies episode | |
| Episode no. | Series 2 Episode 18 (of 76) |
| Directed by | Jim Franklin |
| Produced by | |
| Starring | Tim Brooke-Taylor Graeme Garden Bill Oddie |
| Original air date | 31 December 1971 (Friday — 9.35 p.m.) |
| Guest stars | |
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Beryl Reid as
John Lawrence as "..." Jim Collier as "..." Valerie Stanton as "..." Tony West as "..." |
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| Series 2 episodes | |
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| List of The Goodies episodes | |
Gender Education is an episode of the British comedy television series The Goodies — a BAFTA-nominated series for Best Light Entertainment Programme.[1][2][3]
This episode is also known as "Sex and Violence".
As always, the episode was written by members of The Goodies.
Contents |
Mrs. Desiree Carthorse (Beryl Reid, an obvious parody of Mary Whitehouse) approaches The Goodies as the ideal people to make a clean sex education film about the facts of life. However, she thinks that S-E-X is a sin and does not want the word to be mentioned during the film.
The Goodies respond with an absurdly coy film ("How to Make Babies by Doing Dirty Things") that could not possibly offend anyone, but the use of the word 'gender' in the opening credits disgusts her to such an extent that she refuses to watch the rest of the film.
The Goodies are then asked to make violent films for the BBC; Tim and Graeme are horrified about this and refuse the request, but Bill decides to do so and releases a string of violent films, including a very violent version of Cinderella, called Sinderella.
Bill, who has become obsessed with violence, goes on the rampage and wreaks havoc, resulting in the BBC television studio being destroyed, leaving "ITV back on top".
The absence of the BBC from the airwaves results in a vacuum in Mrs Carthorse's evening activities (formerly consisting of turning the television off) causes her to ask the Goodies what people do without television. When some romantic encounter is shown her with the aid of a telescope she rushes through the street demanding that people "Stop it! Stop it!"
Worried about their credibility, The Goodies created this episode with the sole intention of annoying Mrs Whitehouse, who had written to the BBC to praise the team's wholesome family-orientated humour, clearly overlooking the fact that the first episode contained, in Bill Oddie's words, "drug references, tits and a royal scandal".
Tim Brooke-Taylor explains, "We made Mary Whitehouse, we hoped, seem crass, with lines like: Bill: 'What does your husband do?' Mrs C: 'He keeps his distance.'”[4]
Despite the episode's relatively extreme content, Whitehouse did not complain to the BBC about the Goodies until the Saturday Night Grease episode aired in 1980.
This episode has been released on DVD.
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