John Le Mesurier: It's All Been Rather Lovely

On at the same time as Very Important People was this new documentary about the life of Dad's Army star John Le Mesurier.

In terms of the show's content, it should be pointed out that there's nothing really new or groundbreaking, so if you're a devotee of Le Mesurier then chances are that there will be nothing surprising.

However, if you mainly know him simply as Sgt. Wilson, his appearances alongside Tony Hancock, or his troubled personal life then there's probably some things that might have been new to you. For starters there's the issue of how prolific he was in terms of the number of films he starred in. He did over 100, often just doing a quick cameo role.

One thing that I learnt about him that I never knew previously was that he won a BAFTA award. Not for anything comedic, but for drama, playing in a one-off programme called Traitor by Dennis Potter.

So, for someone mostly unfamiliar with Le Mesurier's background there is much to learn, but if you are an aficionado of his work then this programme's probably not of much use to you.

Review: John Le Mesurier: It's All Been Rather Lovely

John Le Mesurier never did anything as vulgar as showing his feelings, but he was always remarkably English.

An affectionate tribute to a man described as 'one of those actors who worked all the time but never became a big star', whose knack of stealing the show playing detached authority figures made him the perfect choice for Sergeant Wilson in Dad's Army. Family, friends and Dad's Army cohorts Clive Dunn and Ian Lavender recall not only Le Mesurier's charm but also his remarkable relationships with Hattie Jacques (who left him for a younger man) and actress Joan Malin, who cheated on him with best friend Tony Hancock.

It's 100 years since the birth of John Le Mesurier, which is a good enough reason to take another look at the life of this adored actor.

There's nothing really new in It's All Been Rather Lovely (BBC2, 9pm) but it's nice to be reminded of his laid-back style and his extraordinary private life.

This is the man who briefly lost his wife, Hattie Jacques, to his best friend, comic legend Tony Hancock but who remained close to her.

He even took her back, without ever mentioning the split again.

Best remembered as Sgt Wilson, the Dad's Army star, who died in 1983, has a host of celebs queuing up to tell us what a thoroughly decent chap he was.

This documentary on Dad's Army. star John Le Mesurier contains only one clip when he is not performing - and that's from his appearance on This Is Your Life, honouring his then wife Hattie Jacques.

At the time she was having an affair with her driver John Schofield who she had installed in the family home, moving her husband into another room.

You'd never guess that from his demeanour here, so in a way this was very much another acting job.

His third wife Joan also appears here, talking candidly about her own doomed affair with his best friend Tony Hancock.

So you could say Le Mesurier was proof that nice guys finish last (where love is concerned anyway).

Nobody has a bad word to say here about the man whose perfect manners, playfulness and lack of ambition made him so universally adored.

Dad's Army co-writer Jimmy Perry explains how he was initially infuriated by his slightly negative, laid-back approach to the plum role of Sgt Wilson, who rather than barking orders asks, "Would you mind awfully falling in?" and wished he'd do more with it.

But it was precisely this distracted air that made the character so enduring and soon they were writing Wilson based on Le Mesurier himself.

It's fascinating to hear how he ­cultivated a unique aura of uselessness to the extent that he couldn't even make a cup of tea.

Or how he turned up for his first day in the Army with his dinner jacket, jazz records and golf clubs.

Whether or not that was all just an act too, John Le Mesurier was definitely one of a kind.

When John Le Mesurier's wife Joan left him for what turned out to be a brief and disastrous relationship with his best friend Tony Hancock, he became Joan's confidante. He'd comfort her in her unhappiest days with Hancock, telling her: "I love him too, I know exactly how it is, darling."

Everybody loved John Le Mesurier and the contributors here, including Joan, who left Hancock and returned to her husband (he never referred to her affair again) speak of him with unconditional adoration. Le Mesurier was peerless; that wonderful, urbane delivery and the crushed-velvet voice made him unforgettable as Sgt Wilson in Dad's Army.

To those who knew him best, he was charming, warm and delightful. Michael Palin worked with him on Jabberwocky and wonders fondly where Le Mesurier would be in 2012: "Playing a patient in a bed in Casualty?" Palin is a devotee of Le Mesurier's reassuring presence: "[when he appeared] I just felt comfortable. I knew he knew what to do."

Those recalling Robert Bathurst's portrayal of John Le Mesurier in BBC4's Hattie might have thought him too good to be true. Au contraire. No one - from Clive Dunn and Ian Lavender to Michael Palin and JLM's third wife - has a bad word to say about a man who endured repeated cuckolding, perpetual career disappointments and terminal illness with a half-smile and drifted through life with an ineffably British sense of opaque understatement and vague melancholy. Much time is understandably spent on Dad's Army, but this doc also serves as a frustrating 'what might have been' for an underrated actor who ambled through a stop-start career with the same unknowable civility as he did his life. He's the man for whom 'keep calm and carry on' might have been invented.

Julian Rhind-Tutt narrates this in-depth profile of the beloved actor, best remembered for his role as the genteel Sergeant Arthur Wilson in Dad's Army. Friend Michael Palin and Dad's Army co-star Clive Dunn offer fulsome praise, and help dissect Le Mesurier's three marriages and legendary fondness for a tipple (or 10). "It's all been rather lovely" were his final words before slipping into a cirrhosis-induced coma - an appropriate epitaph by all accounts.