Dad's Army

Dad's Army is a nice little thing.

I cannot say I cracked a rib, split my sides, or even raised a belly-laugh - but asome instinct is still telling me that the BBC is about to come up with a classic comedy series... The script mercifully avoided all the tempting cliche traps... Give it a week or two and I'll tell you whether this really is comedy's finest half-hour. All I say now is that the possibilities are tremendous.

It seemed to me to blend sentiment and humour rather uneasily as if afraid of making too much fun of a hallowed wartime institution... The one solid pleasure last night was watching the performance of Arthur Lowe as the organizing hero.

It is nice to see a comedy like Dad's Army, which has enough confidence in its actors to force the pace. It is a humorous recollection of the Home Guard of 1940, but it is played in such an easy-going natural fashion that one imagines even the most hard-bitten professional anti-patriots must find it amusing.

The trouble with this, though, is that it isn't situation or character comedy, it's only gag comedy, the easiest to write and the quickest wearing on the ear.