The Good Life Rings in 50th Anniversary with New Special

U&Gold has slated the feature-length retrospective special The Good Life: Inside Out to celebrate 50 years since The Good Life’s debut.

The one-off 120-minute special is set to air on U&Gold later this year.

At the front of the retrospective is The Good Life star Dame Penelope Keith as Margo Leadbetter. Through her perspective, Keith will take viewers on a journey through the British comedy’s history.

“I am delighted that U&Gold has invited me to celebrate 50 years of The Good Life, a series that was important to me and is still so well loved by viewers,” said Keith. “I have such happy memories of making The Good Life—it was a wonderful cast, and we were working with excellent scripts and a first-rate production team. The only thing I can’t really believe is that it’s 50 years since I first played Margo…where have the years gone?”

The special is set to revisit filming locations and reveal props and artifacts from the show’s development process. Double Yellow Entertainment has recreated Margo and Jerry Leadbetter’s living room as it appeared in the original set, which Keith will visit. The Good Life: Inside Out will also include archival interviews with co-stars Richard Briers, Felicity Kendal and Paul Eddington, as well as producer and director John Howard Davies.

The Good Life: Inside Out is commissioned for UKTV by Helen Nightingale, head of factual and factual entertainment, and ordered by Gerald Casey, director of programming, comedy and entertainment, and Hilary Rosen, director of commissioning. The executive producers are Kirsty Hanson, senior commissioning editor for UKTV and Mark Wells for Double Yellow Entertainment.

Nightingale said, “For a show to be remembered so fondly and to be such a reference point in British everyday conversation as The Good Life after 50 years is testament to its quality, and this new retrospective with Double Yellow will explore just how and why the show has endured.”

Casey added, “The Good Life is truly British comedy heritage, and we’re honored to be opening the vault to a wealth of new material and footage, all helmed by the wonderful Dame Penelope Keith.”

“The Good Life is one of the crown jewels of British comedy,” said Wells. “What a real privilege it’s been to examine it up close in the company of Dame Penelope Keith, who in Margo created one of the all-time sitcom character greats. Fans of The Good Life can look forward to a very special treat.”