It's So Bloody Nice!

The comic strip It's a Nice Life, drawn by Reg Parlett, originated in IPC Magazines' (later known as Fleetway Publications) weekly comic Jackpot. It was a mainstay throughout the comic's modest run of just over two and a half years from May 1979 to January 1982, and regularly finished near the top of reader polls during that time. It survived Jackpot's merger into Buster, where it lasted for over six further years, finishing in the issue dated 30th April, 1988; a pretty decent innings for a story that originated in another comic.

Let's acknowledge the elephant in the room. It wasn't (and indeed isn't) unusual for strips in weekly humour comics to parody or take inspiration from current films and TV shows; other strips that ran alongside this story in Jackpot include Angel's Proper Charlies, The Incredible Sulk, The Teeny Sweeney and Jake's 7. But It's a Nice Life, a strip about Stan and Babs Nice attempting to live a sustainable and self-sufficient lifestyle whilst their next door neighbours, snooty social climbers Ollie and Maddie Jones, watch on in bafflement, seems to take things a step away from finding inspiration from or spoofing The Good Life, and a step closer to, well, just being a comic strip version of The Good Life, down to not only the very similar title but also one of the characters having the same name as their equivalent in the series; that said, there were some notable differences, perhaps the biggest being that both families have children in the strip.

It's tempting to imagine that IPC might have had some kind of arrangement with the BBC in this instance; such a thing would not be without precedent, as they ran several strips based on licensed properties or even real people over the years. Perhaps most pertinently, a strip starring the Goodies had run in Jackpot predecessor Cor!! earlier in the seventies, and the short-lived School Fun (33 weekly issues, October 1983 to May 1984) featured both Coronation Street School and Grange Hill Juniors (the latter of which has a copyright notice expressly crediting Phil Redmond). Officially licensed stories continued to feature right up until the end, with a strip based on the animated series Dr. Zitbag's Transylvania Pet Shop being one of the last new stories to appear in Buster near the end of its life from 1994-96.

You might also notice that It's a Nice Life debuted nearly a year after the final episode of The Good Life was broadcast in June 1978, and continued for almost a decade after that. This seems unusual for a strip referencing a specific TV show; similar strips generally began whilst their inspirations were still on screens, and if their inspiration were to drop out of the zeitgeist they tended to be lucky if they lasted a year afterwards.

A thought comes to mind: what about repeats?

TX Details for the 1978 BBC One Repeat Run of The Good Life

3.1: "The Early Birds" -- repeated 07/09/78, 8pm

3.2: "The Happy Event" -- repeated 14/09/78, 8pm

3.3: "A Tug of the Forelock" -- repeated 21/09/78, 8pm

3.4: "I Talk to the Trees" -- repeated 28/09/78, 8pm

3.5: "The Wind-break War" -- repeated 05/10/78, 8pm

3.6: "Whose Fleas are These?" -- repeated 12/10/78, 8pm

3.7: "The Last Posh Frock" -- repeated 19/10/78, 8pm

The Royal Command Performance: "When I'm Sixty-Five" -- repeated 26/10/78, 8pm

4.1: "Away From It All" -- repeated 02/11/78, 8pm

4.2: "The Green Door" -- repeated 09/11/78, 8pm

4.3: "Our Speaker Today..." -- repeated 16/11/78, 8pm

4.4: "The Weaver's Tale" -- repeated 23/11/78, 8pm

4.5: "Suit Yourself" -- repeated 30/11/78, 8pm

4.6: "Sweet and Sour Charity" -- repeated 07/12/78, 8pm

4.7: "Anniversary" -- repeated 14/12/78, 8pm

We're off to a pretty strong start here: the last two series and the final episode were both repeated just a few months before Jackpot launched. However, the next repeat was not until 1980, under the "Comedy Classic" strand: another outing for "The Last Posh Frock", on 21/07/80 at 7.40pm. (A repeat also airs on BBC One Wales only on the 27th August; possibly the same episode?)

A few months later, the '77 Christmas special is repeated as a "Christmas Comedy Classic" on New Year's Day, 1981 at 7.55pm. This is followed by two repeats under the "Comedy Classic 2" strand a few months later, again from Series 3: "The Happy Event" on 10/07/81, and "The Wind-break War" on 17/07/81. The "Comedy Classic" strand returns a year later in summer 1982 (keep in mind that by this point Jackpot had merged into Buster), with the penultimate episode of Series 1, "The Pagan Rite", on 22/06/82, and yet another airing of "The Last Posh Frock" a day later on 23/06/82.

However, we do then get a full-on repeat run of Series 1 a few months later, in a teatime (...ish) slot on Sundays:

TX Details for the 1983 BBC One Repeat Run of The Good Life

1.1: "Plough Your Own Furrow" -- repeated 02/01/83, 5.25pm

1.2: "Say Little Hen...?" -- repeated 09/01/83, 5.25pm

1.3: "The Weaker Sex?" -- repeated 16/01/83, 4.55pm

1.4: "Pig's Lib" -- repeated 23/01/83, 4.50pm

1.5: "The Thing in the Cellar" -- repeated 30/01/83, 4.55pm

1.6: "The Pagan Rite" -- repeated 06/02/83, 4.55pm

1.7: "Backs to the Wall" -- repeated 22/04/83, 7pm

The repeat of "The Pagan Rite" is billed in the Radio Times as "the last in the present series", with Barry Letts and Terrance Dicks' adaptation of Charles Dickens' Dombey and Son taking up the slot the following week, and then the final episode, "Backs to the Wall", kicks off a primetime repeat run two months later.

The Radio Times does not actually specify which episode was shown on 29/04/83, but the week before they showed the last episode of Series 1, and the week after they show the second episode of Series 2, so it seems reasonable to assume that the following happened:

2.1: "Just My Bill" -- repeated 29/04/83, 7pm

2.2: "The Guru of Surbiton" -- repeated 06/05/83, 7pm

2.3: "Mr. Fix-It" -- repeated 20/05/83, 7pm [a documentary on The Harlem Globetrotters aired on 13/05. No, really]

2.4: "The Day Peace Broke Out" -- repeated 27/05/83, 7pm

2.5: "Mutiny" -- repeated 03/06/83, 7pm

2.6: "Home Sweet Home" -- repeated 10/06/83, 7pm

2.7: "Going to Pot?" -- repeated 17/06/83, 7pm

The run then continues after a break for Wimbledon, but not for terribly long:

3.2: "The Happy Event" -- repeated 08/07/83, 7pm

3.3: "A Tug of the Forelock" -- repeated 15/07/83, 7pm

We then get another outing for the Christmas special on Boxing Day 1983 at 1.30pm, and another repeat run begins in 1984:

TX Details for the 1984-85 BBC One Repeat Runs of The Good Life

1.1: "Plough Your Own Furrow" -- repeated 05/09/84, 5.25pm

1.2: "Say Little Hen...?" -- repeated 12/09/84, 5.25pm

1.3: "The Weaker Sex?" -- repeated 19/09/84, 5.25pm

1.4: "Pig's Lib" -- repeated 26/09/84, 5.30pm

1.5: "The Thing in the Cellar" -- repeated 03/10/84, 5.25pm

1.6: "The Pagan Rite" -- repeated 10/10/84, 5.25pm

1.7: "Backs to the Wall" -- repeated 17/10/84, 5.30pm

2.1: "Just My Bill" -- repeated 24/10/84, 5.25pm

2.2: "The Guru of Surbiton" -- repeated 31/10/84, 5.30pm

2.3: "Mr. Fix-It" -- repeated 07/11/84, 5.25pm

2.4: "The Day Peace Broke Out" -- repeated 14/11/84, 5.25pm

2.5: "Mutiny" -- repeated 21/11/84, 5.30pm

2.6: "Home Sweet Home" -- repeated 28/11/84, 5.25pm

2.7: "Going to Pot?" -- repeated 05/12/84, 5.25pm

3.1: "The Early Birds" -- repeated 12/12/84, 5.25pm

3.2: "The Happy Event" -- repeated 19/12/84, 5.30pm

3.3: "A Tug of the Forelock" -- repeated 02/01/85, 5.30pm

(Note that for this run, all episodes were screened on BBC One Wales two days later, on the Friday, except for the last Series 3 repeat which was a full six days later.)

4.1: "Away From it All" -- repeated 24/05/85, 5.30pm

4.2: "The Green Door" -- repeated 31/05/85, 5.30pm

4.3: "Our Speaker Today..." -- repeated 07/06/85, 5.30pm

4.4: "The Weaver's Tale" -- repeated 14/06/85, 5.30pm

4.5: "Suit Yourself" -- repeated 21/06/85, 5.30pm

4.6: "Sweet and Sour Charity" -- repeated 28/06/85, 5.30pm

The Christmas special is repeated again on BBC One on Christmas Eve 1985, at 11.20pm. There is a single repeat on Saturday 25th January 1986 at 9.20pm; the Radio Times does not specify which episode, but from the cast list it is clearly "When I'm Sixty-Five".

The show is not repeated again whilst It's a Nice Life is running in Buster; the next repeat is a late-night (11.25pm) one on 18/09/88, a few months after the strip had ended.

From mid-1987, It's a Nice Life only ever had one page (having been usually but not always two pages beforehand), and not long after it stopped running in every issue. Whilst this can be partly attributed to the fact that Buster had inherited so many stories from other comics by this time, it also seems like the strip was being slowly wound down: it appears in every other issue for a while, but then becomes increasingly sporadic, including going missing for a full six weeks near the end before popping back up for the last two or three strips.

I am torn as to how strong a link we can make between the repeats of the show and the success of the strip. It certainly seems that It's a Nice Life wasn't just dependent on the show it was so strongly inspired by remaining on air, but on the other hand, it also seems to gradually begin to come to an end when the repeats had been off-air for a little while. (An alternative theory is that given how similar the two stories were, IPC wanted to wait until the show had ended before launching their strip, which might be corroborated by the lack of repeats in the year Jackpot began; perhaps by the time the repeats began again the strip had already attained popularity in its own right?)

Towards the end of its life, when Buster was mostly or entirely reprints, quite a few old stories started reappearing; this included several of Reg Parlett's strips, even if they had clearly been originally printed in the seventies in some cases, but It's a Nice Life was not one of them. (Parlett drew dozens and dozens of stories for IPC/Fleetway down the years; some personal favourites include Ivor Lott and Tony Broke, Disappearing Trix and Fright School. Such was his popularity that his 80th birthday was celebrated on the cover of Buster! He continued to produce new material up until his death in 1991, and some of his strips were inherited by other artists.)

The Good Life was not repeated on the BBC between late 1993 and late 1999 beyond the occasional one-off, which more or less exactly encompasses the period from which Buster started running a higher proportion of repeats, and the point where it was almost nothing but repeats and the comic finished completely at the end of '99; if the show had been in regular rotation, maybe the strip would have had a better shot at being repeated?

(Incidentally, the two It's a Nice Life strips illustrating this piece are from the Buster Book 1988, which was probably completed by mid-1986. The book is mostly printed on newsprint with a few glossy pages in colour, and IaNL gets two double-page stories in colour, plus three other stories in the black-and-white section, perhaps indicating it was still a popular story with readers even near the end of its run. However, one page of each colour story is transposed, meaning each double-page spread has the start of one story and the end of another. This is probably the first time anyone has even attempted presenting them as they're meant to be seen.)