Aaron
Thursday 30th May 2013 8:59pm [Edited]
Royal Berkshire
69,918 posts
Quote: Pingl @ May 30 2013, 9:53 PM BST
The show's premise was not to make fun of the war but to spoof war-based film and TV dramas, and in particular a BBC1 drama Secret Army, which ran from 1977 to 1979 and dealt with the activities of Belgian "escape line" that returned allied pilots to Britain, working from a Brussels cafe and later restaurant. Very many of the elements and characters are directly taken from Secret Army, such as the cafe owner having an affair in the restaurant under the nose of his wife, a bed-ridden woman in a room above who knocks on the floor for attention, a pianist who is also the forger, and the enmity between Gestapo and the German military. Many storylines for 'Allo 'Allo also derive directly from episodes of Secret Army, such as the valuable paintings and the accompanying forgeries, which in an episode from the second series of Secret Army both the Germans and the Resistance are seeking to obtain. Some actors from Secret Army also appear in 'Allo 'Allo!: Richard Marner, Guy Siner, John D. Collins, Hilary Minster and David Beckett. Inspiration was also drawn from patriotic black-and-white British melodramas of the 1940s.
Yeah, you'll forgive me if I pay more attention to comedy historians, books and interviews than the ravings of Americans on Wikipedia.
Just to be clear: whether the show took elements of specific titles - Secret Army or others - and spoofed them (I'm sure it did), doesn't alter that 'Allo 'Allo! was not devised as a spoof of that particular programme, which was the original query.
(Also, we shouldn't be talking about this in the Dad's Army thread.)