Bob Larbey is one of Britain's foremost and funniest scriptwriters. His credits include a string of British TV comedy hits, both with writing partner John Esmonde and on his own. The smash hit Good Neighbors (known in the UK as The Good Life), about a couple who decide to live off their land but stay in suburbia, is undoubtedly the Esmonde/Larbey show with the most devoted following on both sides of the Atlantic. American audiences might also be familiar with Mulberry, the pair's offbeat fantasy sitcom. Larbey's solo TV writing credits include the romantic comedies A Fine Romance and As Time Goes By, both starring British acting treasure Dame Judi Dench. Larbey also wrote the first four episodes of The Darling Buds of May, a show that became a ratings blockbuster in the UK. His first stage play, A Month of Sundays, was named best new comedy of the year in London in 1986 and has been performed around the world. It opened on Broadway in 1987 with Jason Robards in the lead role. Acorn recently caught up with Larbey and talked with him about the writing life, some of our favorite shows and one of the world's favorite actresses.

The Writing Life

Acorn: Like Tom Good in The Good Life, both you and John Esmonde chucked office jobs you hated to follow a dream. Tom's dream was to become totally self-sufficient on his suburban plot while you and John dreamed of becoming comedy writers. Tom waited until he was 40 but you two were a lot younger, weren't you?

Bob Larbey: About 10 years younger, yes, but we were both coming up to 40 when we wrote The Good Life. That was the beginning of the idea, actually. You know, a man of 40, it's one of those milestone ages. It's one of those "Oh god, what am I doing with my life?" times and we decided that was where Tom Good would start. And then we decided on self-sufficiency as his answer.

Acorn: So do you think you and John saw a little bit of yourselves in the character of Tom Good?

Bob Larbey: I think so. As I said, we'd done it about 10 years earlier. We both had office jobs we disliked and we used to moan a lot, "There must be something better to do than this." We've known each other since school, John and I, and we used to make each other laugh quite a lot. And we thought if we could make each other laugh, maybe we could make somebody else laugh as well. We started in radio, actually. We worked for about three years while we were still at our office jobs. We used to write evenings and weekends and send everything out and get it all sent back again, the usual stuff. Collect our rejection slips. Then finally we began to sell sketches, just little short things to radio and that was the beginning.

Acorn: What was it like when you sold that first one?

Bob Larbey: Oh, tremendously exciting. We got paid about £10, I think, by the BBC, and it seemed like the biggest day in our lives.

Acorn: How did your writing partnership work? Did you just talk out ideas until you came up with something you both liked?

Bob Larbey: We talked endlessly, which you need to do, I suppose, if you're writing something. We never had any particular role to play. We were quite interchangeable. The closest one to the pencil wrote stuff down. We used to ad-lib a lot, sort of play the characters we were going to be writing about and try and make each other laugh. And then when we did, we'd stop and try and to remember what it was that made us laugh so we could write it down.

Acorn: How do you develop a sitcom—what comes first, the situation or the characters?

Bob Larbey: I think it's a mixture. Some sitcoms are very strong on the situation and some are really just character-driven. That said, I think you need both. I think if you've got good characters, very often you don't really need much of a situation. The Good Life just happened to be a novel situation. It was something that nobody had done over here and then we grafted the characters on top of it.

Acorn: Do writers stay involved once a script is in production or does the director take over at that point?

Bob Larbey: Mostly the writers stay close to the thing over here because, as you know, most British comedies are written by either one writer or a team of two; we don't use the American team system of writers. We get involved with the casting and then we go to rehearsals, usually a couple of days and then leave them to it.

Acorn: And do you revise the script as it goes along?

Bob Larbey: Occasionally, but surprisingly little, actually. If you're there on the first day for the read-through, I think that's when a problem generally shows. For a sitcom, you've only got a week to rehearse, which is a very short time, and it's really pretty silly to rush in at the last moment with a load of changes.

Acorn: Any advice for aspiring comedy writers?

Bob Larbey: The advice I've always had for aspiring comedy writers is to keep going, don't get disappointed too early, don't get put off. Hardly anybody writes something very good straight away. You've just got to keep sort of battering at the door until you make a little crack in it and creep through. I'm sure that there are more talented writers than me knocking around who gave up because they were not getting accepted after two or three years. I think you've got to stick with it longer than that. And the second thing, and this is only my opinion, is that you must always write what you think is funny, not what you think other people will find funny. You're trying to please everybody in the world that way. You've just got to go along with your own sense of humor and hope that somebody else laughs too.

The Good Life

Acorn: Casting must be a really crucial step in developing a good show. Your first casting coup with The Good Life was attracting sitcom star Richard Briers, but the other three members of the ensemble—Felicity Kendal, Penelope Keith and Paul Eddington—were primarily theatre actors making the leap to TV, weren't they?

Bob Larbey: Richard had done situation comedy before over the years and we knew he was a fine actor. The three other actors were then primarily theatre actors and that was the bonus because television viewers thought they were new. People kept saying, "Where did you discover these people?" because they hadn't played situation comedy before. I think Felicity Kendal had done some television, Penelope Keith had done some television, Paul Eddington had played a baddie, but none of them had played comedy on TV and they were all smashing actors. What we got was four lead actors, effectively, which is really quite rare—to get that amount of talent into one comedy.

Acorn: Does the way you write a series change after a show is cast? How did that work for The Good Life?

Bob Larbey: Generally speaking, no. I think you write characters and then rely on the actors' talent to do what they will with the characters to bring them alive. If something runs for a few series, you do inevitably pick something up from the actors. You pick up the way that they say certain things, the way that they wave their hands or don't wave their hands and you sort of allow for that, but I think to begin with you just try and write solid characters and then rely on the actors' talent.

Acorn: We recently released the last series of The Good Life, which includes the last regular episode—"Anniversary"—in which Tom and Barbara reassess their commitment to self-sufficiency. Can you remember any ideas you had for the last episode that you scrapped in favor of the story line in "Anniversary"?

Bob Larbey: I honestly can't put hand on heart and say we had other ideas, we knew it was going to be the last episode, we'd all decided that we'd end, hopefully, on top. I think we probably did discuss them failing, but it would have been such a dismal ending. It was a happy kind of program, so we came as close as we could by having them threatened, having the place burgled and Jerry next door saying "For goodness sake, now you've really got to quit." And they wouldn't quit.

Acorn: I love what Margo says, "If we had more people like you…

Bob Larbey: …we wouldn't have lost the empire." A bit dated, but it's a good line.

Acorn: The fond relationship between the couples, even though they are so different, is one of the nicest things about the story.

Bob Larbey: Thank you. I think you're right about that relationship. I think there were two things that really made that show work. One was the fact that the Goods didn't move to the country and buy a few acres and do it that way; they did it in the city basically, in the suburbs, which gave it that unusual twist. And we said, "well obviously people must live next door so what is it going to be like?" The first thing that jumps in your mind is you think people will disapprove of it violently, you know, look over the fence and say, "Oh my god, pigs and chickens," and all the rest of it. But then we decided to try and make the neighbors two- or three-dimensional by making them friends in the first place, so that they could disapprove of what the Goods were doing but still be friends. It would have been a very short joke if you just had a couple of nasty people looking over the fence and making noises.

Acorn: Any great behind-the-scenes stories?

Bob Larbey: There's only one about The Good Life which I remember. I think it was the second series or something. We always used to have a little party at the end of the series and that time it was Penelope Keith's turn and so we were going to have a little party at her house, which was lovely. And she'd made chili con carne, which we all ate and ummmm lovely, had a good time, said "see you next series," and all went home. During the night, my wife was quite ill; I didn't feel 100 percent. The next day Richard Briers phoned up and said Paul Eddington had fallen out of bed he was in so much pain and had to crawl to the telephone. Word was getting round by this time. And what Penny had done, the classic, she hadn't soaked the kidney beans. And what in fact we all had was arsenic poisoning, which didn't kill anybody but you can imagine the phone calls that went backwards and forwards about how do we tell Penny what happened. I don't know how she ever found out but she did and took it in very good spirits. That could have been the end of GN really.

Acorn: And what a Margo thing to do.

Bob Larbey: What a Margo thing to do, yes, she'd expected someone else to soak the beans.

Acorn: The very last The Good Life ever was a special—"When I'm 65"—and the taping was a benefit performance attended by Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip. Did knowing that you were writing for royalty affect the script in any way?

Bob Larbey: No, we'd never met the Queen so we didn't know what made her laugh. We just tried to write one more funny script. The only unnerving bit was the fact that the Queen was going to be sitting in the audience, which is a bit unusual, and we were going to meet her afterwards. Everybody was terrified. Everybody. Even people who claimed not to be. And you've never seen so many technicians in one studio. It was amazing. Three men for every light bulb in case something went wrong. It was a good evening once it was finished.

Judi, Judi, Judi

Acorn: Both A Fine Romance and As Time Goes By, two of your best-known "solo" series, star Judi Dench. How did that happen?

Bob Larbey: What happened with A Fine Romance was I needed to make some money, literally. We'd just moved house, my wife and I, and we couldn't sell the old house that we'd moved from so we had a bridging loan from the bank. I said to my agent, "What do I do?" And she quite wisely said, "Well, you're a comedy writer, write something funny." So I thought of A Fine Romance and showed it to Humphrey Barclay at London Weekend Television who was head of comedy, a smashing chap. He liked it and commissioned a script and I wrote the script. And he said, "Great, we'll do a series." And then we got to casting it. Michael Williams was mentioned relatively early on as a possibility and then we batted lists of actresses backwards and forwards—"She'd be good, but…" or "Don't like her, but…" and all that. And I was in Humphrey's office one day and he said, "Look forget all that. In a dream world, who would you like to play it?" And I said, "Well, Judi Dench." He thought for a minute and said, "Alright, I'll send her a script, it can't hurt. Just because she's this great dramatic actress doesn't mean she doesn't have a laugh now and then." And he sent Judi Dench a script and back came the message that she'd laughed like a drain and wanted to do it. Which was terrific. Sort of mold-breaking to get someone of that caliber to do situation comedy.

Acorn: And you did it not once but twice.

Bob Larbey: Getting her for As Time Goes By was actually quite a surprise. I didn't know Judi was going to be in it until I was told.

Acorn: So you didn't write it with Judi in mind?

Bob Larbey: No, no, no, again, it's just written for characters and, hopefully, some good actors. And if you get her, you've got the best.

Acorn: Both A Fine Romance and As Time Goes By are about mature romance, which is something that is not a common subject, in the U.S. anyway, for any kind of TV comedy or drama.

Bob Larbey: I've come to realize that. TV seems very youth-oriented. If you're over 35 you're dead. A lot of people seem to relate to the stories. They're mature romances because I'm a mature romantic.

Acorn: So you didn't set out initially to write a love story about people who are over 30?

Bob Larbey: Not specifically. I mean I wanted to write a love story and, basically, you're more at ease writing about your own age as opposed to remembering what it was like being 25. I wanted A Fine Romance to be about ordinary people. There were a lot of glossy romances at that time where everybody was beautiful all the time and I thought, well, that's not life. I wanted to write about ordinary people who weren't beautiful, who were a bit shy and edgy with strangers. As Time Goes By is simply a progression, I suppose. Another romance only a bit further down the road.

Acorn: And As Time Goes By is still in production?

Bob Larbey: We recorded six more episodes just after Christmas, which haven't been shown in the UK yet, and there is talk of another lot, so if everybody's happy to do them, I'll do some more.

Acorn: Americans probably know Dench best from her movie roles as imposing English queens—Queen Victoria in Mrs. Brown, for which she was nominated for an Oscar, and Queen Elizabeth in Shakespeare in Love, for which she won an Oscar—and as "M" in the James Bond movies. The characters she plays in your shows are not exactly pushovers either. What's the real Judi like to work with?

Bob Larbey: This is going to sound like cliché time. She's perfect is the answer. She's hugely talented. Just as herself, she's the nicest lady in the world. She's got no side about her, she's no kind of show off, no big star stuff. I'll tell you a story—when we were recording As Time Goes By sometime back, I looked at the morning paper and it said "Judi Dench nominated for Oscar whilst recording." And I thought, well, when did that happen and then I remembered, we were having lunch, about eight of us in the BBC canteen, and Judi's little mobile phone rang and she took it close to a window for better reception, came back and said, "Who wants coffee?" And she bought coffees for all of us and said nothing else at all. I realized that phone call was when she learned she'd been nominated for an Oscar. That is style, isn't it?

Acorn: Absolutely.

Bob Larbey: That's what she's about. She's just as likely to get you a coffee and mother everybody as anything else. And when she was first made a dame, we were again rehearsing and we said, "what do we do about this?" We faked it and we all bowed and curtsied and called her "your ‘damenosity'" and stuff like that. She's lovely. She's a lovely lady.

Acorn: In As Time Goes By she looks like she's having a great time.

Bob Larbey: Yes, she does. To go back to A Fine Romance before that, one of the joys for Judi, I think, was reaching a mass audience; it was the first time she'd really done it. She'd done all of Stratford and National Theatre and all this great theatre stuff, but it had only been watched by several hundred people at one time and suddenly there were millions watching her and she was getting sackfuls of fan mail and all the rest of it. I think that she was quite tickled by it.

Sitcoms

Acorn: British television comedies attract some of your country's most talented classically trained actors. That doesn't seem to happen in the U.S. Why do you think that is?

Bob Larbey: I don't know. I think the money in TV is probably attractive. You know you can be playing the grandest parts in the world at the National Theatre but for very little money. With people like Judi doing TV, it's broken down the snob barriers. In the "olden days," a lot of theatre actors thought it quite beneath them to do something as undignified as a little situation comedy. When people like Judi do it, they realize that they're not "little" situation comedies, that they're very very hard work. And that it takes a lot of talent to do one.

Acorn: Many of your shows, including The Good Life and A Fine Romance, are considered Britcom classics. What do you think makes a show a classic?

Bob Larbey: I wish I knew. I could bottle it and sell it. It obviously has to have some sort of lasting quality, something that seems to make it come up fresh even when it's been repeated several times. I think it's characters. It really goes back to that. If you can create characters that people genuinely come to love, that they genuinely get interested in, then I think perhaps it becomes a classic.

Acorn: Has comedy—specifically the situation comedy—changed over the years you've been in the business?

Bob Larbey: Oh yes, a lot. Over here, I think it's getting a lot dirtier. It's alright, I don't really class myself as a prude, but some of it, I think, is almost deliberately aimed to shock. Again, aiming for younger audiences, which I think is a mistake. I've got a son who's just turned 16, but when he's 18 or 20 or whatever, if he was sitting home on Saturday nights watching television I'd be deeply surprised. I think, by and large, it is the older audiences who watch television. Currently, there seems to be a feeling that there's a bit too much of it, each one trying to get a bit sexier than the last one or use a bit more foul language than the last one.

Acorn: Do you think the pendulum will swing back?

Bob Larbey: I think it will; I think it's absolutely inevitable, because BBC some time back did a series of so-called classic comedies, The Good Life, Fawlty Towers, stuff like that, and it got tremendous response, and people were saying, "Where did that comedy go?" I think there's room for some other stuff, too, of course, it's just got slightly out of balance at the moment, which is why a lot of comedies now are coming and going in one season.

Acorn: What are some of your favorite current or recent U.S. or UK shows?

Bob Larbey: Easily my favorite U.S. show is Frasier; we're big fans of that in this house. It's actually witty, it has beautiful characters, it's clean, I think it's lovely. I find that a little oasis every week in the midst of quite a lot of rubbish.

Acorn: What are some of your favorite old ones?

Bob Larbey: I think a series like Porridge—I don't know if you had that over there—it was about life in prison, which was just hilarious, full of wonderful, wonderful people. There's not a current English one—given that it's the summer, so it's not the best time—that really makes me think, yea, I've got to watch that. We're doing some fairly good sketch shows at the moment; there's one around called Smack the Pony with three very talented girls in it. They write it and do it themselves, and that I find very very funny indeed.

Acorn: How do you know when to end a sitcom like The Good Life that's still going strong after several seasons?

Bob Larbey: If it's a situation-driven show, I think you know when the situation has exhausted itself. With The Good Life, for example, John and I decided to bring that to an end simply because we were running out of stories about self-sufficiency. We read as many books as we could on the subject and made up as many things as we could, but when you find you've done two pig stories you think there probably isn't a third pig story. It could have gone on, and I think the BBC would have liked it to go on, but it would have become just a series about four people. It wouldn't have been about self-sufficiency and that was the very nub of it. In character-driven comedy, which is what As Time Goes By is about, it doesn't have a shelf life really; if the writing gets tired then that would show and that would be time to quit. I knew A Fine Romance had a life—we all did—because that was about two people sparring and the end was him saying, "I love you." Where do you go from there? So they get married, and all the rest of it. Again, all the comedy in that was about the tension between these two people—would they or wouldn't they?—and once you knew they would that to me said, that's the end of it.

Acorn: So do you ever think about what your life might have been like if you'd kept to that office job?

Bob Larbey: I really try not to, not very happy I don't think. I think I would have probably just been a dismal failure and miserable.

Acorn: And instead you got to laugh for a living.

Bob Larbey: Which is a nice way to make a living, isn't it. At the end of the day you say, "Well, I made a few million people laugh."

Thanks to Meggie for alerting me to this article which appeared uncredited at the Acornmedia web site. If you are interested in buying copies of A Fine Romance or The Good Neighbors check the online catalog at their web site.

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