British actor Richard Briers dies at age 79
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British actor Richard Briers, an avuncular comic presence on TV and movie screens for decades, has died at the age of 79. --FILE PHOTO: AP
LONDON (AP) - British actor Richard Briers, an avuncular comic presence on TV and movie screens for decades, has died at the age of 79.
Briers' agent, Christopher Farrar, said the actor died at his London home on Sunday. A former heavy smoker, he had suffered from emphysema.
Briers starred in the 1970s sitcom The Good Life as Tom Good, a man who decides to quit the urban rat race for a life of self-sufficiency in suburbia.
The show, which contrasted the back-to-the land Goods with their conventional neighbours the Leadbetters, made stars of its core cast - Briers, Felicity Kendal, Penelope Keith and Paul Eddington - and is regularly voted one of the greatest British sitcoms of all time. It aired in the US as Good Neighbors.
