Dad’s Army: The Lost Episodes
If you’ve not already been to see Dads Army: The Lost Episodes, you’ve probably missed your chance. I saw it at Newcastle’s Theatre Royal last weekend, and as this was on the last day of the second-last location of the tour, and that was a few days ago, you’ve probably missed your chance now.
Now I’m not a massive fan of Dad’s Army. I like it, in a ‘it’s a gentle sitcom and will generally raise a few chuckles or two’ kind of a way, but I wouldn’t normally go out of my way to watch it. So why would I go to see it at the theatre?
Well, it was my mother’s birthday earlier in the year, and I’d wanted to do something different, so I decided to take her to the theatre and had a look around to see what was on. This Dad’s Army thing struck me as the sort of show that I would probably not normally have picked to see (and nor would my mother), but would probably enjoy if we went.
So we did.
What can I say? The cast was basically made up of “Leslie Grantham, plus a load of people I’d never heard of” (although on reading the programme I did discover the one playing Godfrey had previously been ‘the man from Del Monte’ in the tinned fruit commercials).
They were obviously cast to try to be close to the original Dad’s Army cast, because for the most part each cast member looked similar to their original TV counterpart, and instead of ‘reimagining’ Dad’s Army for modern audiences, they’d obviously tried to stay true to the original, which worked well.
The characters of Sergeant Wilson, Captain Mainwaring, Private Walker (Leslie Grantham) and in particular Frazer were outstandingly good. Frazer in fact wasn’t just true to the original — he was better than the original, and David Warwick’s mannerisms demonstrating Sergeant Wilson’s frustration with Mainwaring were simply beautiful. Grantham seems to be the ‘name’ used to sell the show, and although he is very good as Walker, he is comfortably surpassed by the excellent Warwick (Wilson) and Kern Falconer (Frazer).
The show wasn’t like a standard theatre show: it didn’t tell a single story over two acts. Instead, it told the tale of four separate episodes from Dad’s Army, two in the first act and two in the second. Three of the four episodes had been lost to the world owing to the BBC’s policy in the 1960s of wiping the tapes after broadcast, and the final one was the one everyone remembers (”The Deadly Attachment”), with the captured Germans and the “don’t tell him your name, Pike!” bit…
…but I must say it was a shame that these episodes were wiped. The scripts for all three (assuming the theatre version stayed relatively true to the original) were great fun, with two in particular being a great loss: “A Stripe for Frazer”, saw Frazer get promoted to lance-corporal and go off on a bit of a power trip, whereas “Room At The Bottom” (since found in black & white, although originally recorded in colour) saw Mainwaring (temporarily) demoted to Lieutenant and then Private.
In both, the ways in which the cast — Frazer, Jones, Wilson and Mainwaring in particular — react to the promotions and demotions, and the ways this is characterised is exceedingly well done.
It was an entertaining night out, it’s always nice to visit the theatre once in a while (’cos I’m like geet cultchad, yee knaa…), the cast were simply excellent, and it was particularly nice to have the chance to see episodes of Dad’s Army which other than the scripts appear to have been lost forever…
Altogether now:
Who do you think you are kidding Mr. Hitler?
If you think we’re on the run…
We are the boys who will stop your little game,
We are the boys who will make you think again…Dad’s Army Theme Song (on Wikiquote)
Hello. I am 
…… Mr Brown goes off to town on the 8.21
and he comes home each evening and he’s ready with his gun….
Me? Watch Dad’s Army? Never.. :o)
I find it’s one of those series, along with Last of the Summer Wine, that I can go back to and still fall about laughing. They both come from the days of brilliant observations to provide the comedy rather than the ’smack you in the face with the obvious’ shows we get these days.
If you get the chance, check out the LotSW episode called ‘The Locksley Lozenge’. Classic.