Dad's Army

Dad's Army quiz

Did you watch Dad's Army and if so how much can you remember from the timeless classic?

Radio Times review

Self-important Mainwaring and bull-in-a-china-shop Hodges have never shied away from airing their differences. But in this episode the boundary lines are drawn - in chalk. A bombed ARP HQ forces the wardens and Home Guard to share the village hall - the expected jostlings ensue.

It's a resolutely low-fi outing - the painted backdrop to the Verger's hedge-clipping scenes are as amateur- hour as some of the slapstick - but, as ever, there's great fun to be had. Clive Dunn looks like he's trying not to laugh at making a chicken noise from a tin and some string (well, who wouldn't?), there's a stunt that will be familiar to Porridge fans, and Frazer gets almost too carried away with one of his shaggy dog stories.

My favourite TV show: Dad's Army

Dad's Army's ironising approach to national identity made me fall for Britain in a way that only Danny Boyle's Olympics opening ceremony has done since.

Radio Times review

BBC sensitivity was such that for years we were deprived of this triumphant episode. It was off our screens for 42 years until 2012, its IRA subplot deemed too controversial. But the Irish question is very much an aside to an instalment so packed with gags, misunderstandings and drama that it fairly takes the breath away.

Contrasting phone manner offers a lot of initial fun: Wilson's hilariously fey "Hullo?"; a submissive Mainwaring deafened by his wife's receiver slamming. Soon the platoon teeters on the brink of mutiny (over a pub darts match, but there is real acrimony), Jones comes to regret his under-the-counter offer to the captain and Hodges muscles in on Mavis Pike. Is Wilson too much the gentleman to intervene?

You'll laugh, you'll be tense, you'll worry about 74-year-old Arnold Ridley getting roughed up by a burly henchman.

Dad's Army quiz

Did you watch Dad's Army and if so how much can you remember from the timeless classic...

Jimmy Perry interview

The sitcom writer talks about his life in showbiz, his Dad's Army heroes and the one that got away...

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."

Radio Times review

This lesser entry to the Army canon, about toughening up the platoon's feet, is a curious beast. The podiatric pranks are a little hit-and-miss, but there's much for fans to savour. For instance, after all the chip-on-his-shoulder speeches to Wilson about privilege, Mainwaring gives him a surprisingly generous - and accurate - character analysis.

So if all the shoe-shop tomfoolery fails to hit the spot, just enjoy Pike at his mollycoddled worst, a guest turn from the wonderful Erik (Mr Smith in Please Sir!) Chitty and an epic fail at the seaside for Mainwaring.

And those who pooh-pooh the idea that Pike is Wilson's son will be dumbfounded by one scene that all but shouts out the connection.

Radio Times review

Walmington's spats with the rival platoon in Eastgate are always great, pratfalling fun, and a training exercise in which Mainwaring's marauders have to plant a bomb in a windmill is certainly played full tilt. But we open in the pub, where that tedious old walrus Captain Square - all beer and bluster - is holding court. And, in his first appearance in Dad's Army, Robert Raglan (as a sergeant, but he'll later become "the Colonel") throws a priceless glance at the barman as Square bores for Britain.

Arthur Lowe trumps that look with one that was to become a trademark (glasses removed, cheeks puffed out with exasperation), after Frazer gives a typically windy speech.

It's the story where Jones branches out, Frazer has an overinflated opinion of himself, sheep wear helmets and the Verger finds a novel use for a cemetery urn. Utterly, beautifully bonkers.

Captain Mainwaring is like a pig in mud when the platoon takes delivery of a 13-pounder QF mark V (a big gun). This being a naval weapon, the men look to Private Frazer for operational tips. But it turns out the self-aggrandising Scot was only ever a cook, though he insists: "When the shells are flying it takes a man to stay below and make shepherd's pie."

One failed firing-rehearsal later, the squad crowd into the office to plan strategy with a model of Walmington, using tins of Spam and toy soldiers ("Don't lean on the gasworks, boy!").

It's actually an unusually sloppy episode, which would have benefited from some better line-learning or a few retakes. But it's still an endearing snapshot of Little England dithering in a crisis.