Jimmy Perry

Dad's Army is one of the best-loved sitcoms but this comedy drama tells the story of its troubled creation and how it nearly failed to make it. It's set in the BBC of the 1960s in what seems like a dingy British equivalent of Mad Men: executives in boxy suits smoke in their offices but the American show's sleek glamour is replaced here with absurdity and frustration.

Jimmy Perry came up with the idea for Dad's Army when he was a struggling actor being constantly rejected for roles. He turned to writing out of desperation, thinking he could create a part for himself where he'd be sure to be cast. Teaming up with David Croft, they perfected the script but there were grumblings from BBC bigwigs that the war was "old hat" and no-one would be interested in the show. Then there was the task of persuading actors to take on silly roles. Poor Perry, despite having written a part from himself, was told he couldn't be cast as the show would work as an "ensemble" and an actor can't also be the writer as it would upset the balance.

Heartbroken, he threw himself into making it the best sitcom it could be, and worked to court and persuade the chosen actors, many of whom were initially difficult and not impressed at being asked to play daft old men.

Paul Ritter stars as frustrated thesp Jimmy Perry, while Richard Dormer is David Croft, a jaded comedy producer feeling pushed out by the BBC. When Perry comes to Croft with his script for a sitcom tentatively titled The Fighting Tigers, the two men begin a battle against "the enemy within" to get it made by the BBC. The dialogue may be on the broad side, but the acting and direction are splendid. Ritter and Dormer are grippingly good, while John Sessions makes for an astonishing Arthur Lowe.

Radio Times review

From the animated-arrow captions to the church hall set re-creation, this knockabout biopic envelopes Dad's Army fans in a very warm embrace. It charts the meeting, partnership and battles with the Beeb of two of our finest comedy writers, Jimmy Perry and David Croft, whisking us back to the smoke-wreathed 60s - all brown and beige, big specs and high hems.

Writer Stephen Russell holds your hand through the who's who and what's what, but with a lightness of touch and a deep affection for the imperishable Home Guard sitcom. There are lump-in-the-throat moments, too: Perry overseeing his hero Bud Flanagan record the theme tune is a beauty (Bud died shortly afterwards), and the whole thing ends with the perfect pop song.

Paul Ritter and Richard Dormer are superb as flamboyant Perry and commanding Croft. Just as this drama is a tribute to them, so is Dad's Army's longevity. Frank Williams, 84, the show's original vicar, recently told RT, "People have often asked me whether there was a lot of re-writing? No there wasn't, because there wasn't any need to. They produced the goods."

You have been watching their work for four decades, and will be for many years to come.

We're Doomed! The Dad's Army Story review

With all the season's comfort and joy but none of the mawkishness, We're Doomed! The Dad's Army Story dramatised the delightful, cocklewarming story of how two middle-aged has-beens called Jimmy Perry and David Croft triumphed over adversity to create the greatest British sitcom of all time.

Appropriately enough, the theme in the final documentary in the series looking at the work of Dad's Army and It Ain't Half Hot Mum creators Jimmy Perry and David Croft is how the duo's writing was so often concerned with the end of an era. This meant they wrote about old ideas as these faded, and as new British identities emerged. It's a notion replete with possibilities: Captain Mainwaring as an arch conservative yet also representing the rise of grammar school boys in the era of Heath and Wilson, anyone?

The series charting the careers of Jimmy Perry and David Croft, the duo behind sitcoms Dad's Army, Are You Being Served? and more, considers what their work tells us about attitudes towards love and sex in Britain in the 20th century. This is, when you consider Sergeant Wilson's relationship with Mavis Pike, at least in part a story of how the British are adept at making things perfectly well understood yet left unsaid. It's a story about class, too, expressed in the way Hi-de-Hi! yellowcoat Gladys Pugh yearns for a bit of posh.

Radio Times review

Dad's Army turns into Trumpton in a late-1972 episode that drew more viewers (18.5 million) than any other. When challenged to outwit the Home Guard commando unit by planting a dummy bomb in their fuel depot, the platoon dress as firemen for their "secret" mission.

As you might expect from the outlandish premise, the humour is Norfolk broad - Pike getting squirted at regular intervals, Jones deafening everyone with the fire bell, and so on. That said, there are some lovely moments with Mainwaring getting snubbed at the Rotary dinner (writers Jimmy Perry and David Croft never failed to prick his pomposity). There's also a formative role for Geoffrey Hughes (two years later he had become Corrie's bin man Eddie Yeats) and, from Godfrey, the line "I wouldn't mind dressing up as a nun."

A new film of Dad's Army is to be made, which is a brave move on the part of all involved. Few TV programmes are so inextricably associated with the people who played the main characters rather than with plot or place. To imagine someone other than Arthur Lowe playing Captain Mainwaring is hard, though Bill Nighy stepping into John Le Mesurier's shoes as Sergeant Wilson is less difficult to envisage. Jimmy Perry, whose co-author David Croft died three years ago, said he was letting the film-makers "get on with it". But in the mid-Seventies, the show was a national institution, with audiences sometimes in excess of 18 million. A sympathetic reworking of the original will be a considerable achievement given the special place that Dad's Army has in the nation's heart. As Corporal Jones might have said (and presumably will say again): "Don't panic".

Radio Times review

This episode, about guarding PoWs, isn't top-drawer Dad's but does feature Mainwaring stuck down a hole "like Winnie the Pooh", Godfrey delivering the unimaginable line "Your tiny hand is frozen" to an Italian soldier, and more heroic sentence-mangling from Jones. Plus another of those typically sunny location shoots. As Jimmy Perry recently recalled for Radio Times, "Usually the weather was very good. We called it David Croft Weather."