“Dad’s Army”: An Appreciation

I stopped watching television regularly around about 1984, well before most of you were born.  The hyperbolic declarations made below are surely qualified by this fact.  I’m not really equipped to make pronouncements on the history of a medium that I’ve ignored for a quarter century.  That said, some research has revealed that others feel the same, sentimental way about those dithering geriatric nincompoops from Warmington-on-sea.  Any who rate, say, “Blackadder” or “The Young Ones” as the epitome of British televisual wit should note that Ben Elton is in my camp.

“Dad’s Army” is, arguably, Britain’s finest ever ‘mass produced’ situation comedy.  I chose my words carefully, for it is difficult to compare a television series of 80 episodes spread across nine years with the comparatively short run of “Fawlty Towers”, the masterpiece that benefited from untold time and attention lavished upon it at scripting stage.  The structural brilliance of the Booth/Cleese teleplays, combined with the trump card of Cleese’s own, manic depressive performance, is impossible to top.

“Towers” aside, “Dad’s Army” stands head and shoulders above not only shows produced before and contemporaneously, but anything made since.  It’s creators, Jimmy Perry and David Croft, attempted to replicate the formula many times over, but never came close to recapturing the magic.  It turns Perry’s own Second World War experiences in the civilian defence force - the Home Guard - into comedic gold.

Part of “Dad’s Army”’s secret is the way it combines broad, physical humour and reliance on repeated catch-phrases and situations with a much more subtle evocation of character and culture.  It is at once an out and out farce, stressing the ridiculousness of old men playing soldiers at a time of national crisis, and a warm, heartfelt ode to patriotism and the spirit of wartime Britain.

Like all successful comedy, the series is based on character and character relationships.  These might be primarily grounded in Perry’s and Croft’s writing, but even high calibre screenplays are nothing without a quality cast to carry them off.  “Dad’s Army” enjoyed the services of some of the 20th century’s greatest character actors, veterans of stage and screen who brought a lifetime of experience to bear on the material.  By this I don’t just mean acting experience, either.  Their respective characters, particularly as they evolved over the nine years, drew on the actors’ real personalities as well as their military records in both wars.

Arthur Lowe’s George Mainwaring is the centrepiece of the show, a pompous snob of a bank manager who thinks himself a miniature Montgomery.  The sociological and political depth of “Dad’s Army” stems from Mainwaring’s profound middle classness, from on the one hand his perception of himself as someone who is self made and who has advanced professionally on merit, and on the other is superior to the working class by dint of birth.  In this way Mainwaring is able to simultaneously lord it over his upper class subordinate Sergeant Wilson and the likes of Private Walker, a cockney spiv. 

Mainwaring’s pomposity corresponds to neither incompetence nor outright arrogance.  He at no point completely loses audience sympathy as however foolhardy his actions or mistaken his thinking might get it is always counterbalanced by unstinting patriotism, undoubted courage and genuine affection for the men under his command.  The cross he has to bear in his private life - one he always stops short of acknowledging openly - is an unseen, anti-social and unpleasant wife.  Mainwaring is a henpecked husband.  “Mum’s Army”, one of the most perfectly realised episodes that’s something of a homage to “Brief Encounter”, has him flirt with the idea of having an affair, but, of course, such things just aren’t done by respectable bank managers.

Mainwaring’s chief clerk at the bank, and senior NCO in the platoon, is Sergeant Arthur Wilson.  Impeccably underplayed by John Le Mesurier, Wilson’s background is one of privilege.  Laconic and self-effacing, he is a ladies man but one it is always suggested who struggles to keep up with the physical demands of his surreptitious lover, Mrs Pike. 

Wilson’s relationship with Mainwaring is complex and multifaceted, and never ceases to develop.  In the very last episode it is revealed that he was a captain in WW I, a fact that Wilson has always kept from a lofty superior who is always sensitive where his subordinate’s upper class origins are concerned.  The key Wilson/Mainwaring episode, “A. Wilson (Manager)?”, sees Wilson promoted to head his own branch and gain a commission in a rival platoon.  The interaction between Lowe and Le Mesurier achieves a resonance worthy of straight drama, the concluding, fade-out image of Wilson’s face after having to eat humble pie when his would-be bank has been destroyed in an air-raid a moving portrait of repressed disappointment and frustration.

The third of the show’s main characters is Lance Corporal Jack Jones.  The most broadly drawn and mimicked “Dad’s Army” figure, Jones is the only one played by an actor significantly younger that the part as written: Clive Dunn.  A doddering military veteran who fought in the Sudan and the Boer War, Jones has a plethora of oft-repeated phrases and behavioural patterns, screaming out “don’t panic” whenever faced with a challenging situation, referring to the “fuzzy wuzzies” in the desert, and regularly observing that the Hun is unlikely to enjoy the “cold steel” of a bayonet “up ‘em”.

Dunn might come close to outright mugging at times but that’s not to say that either the character lacks depth or the actor is incapable of shading.  Jones is a lot more than a buffoon: the ultra-enthusiast who is always first to volunteer, loyal to a fault where Mainwaring is concerned, his pride is easily wounded when questions about age and competence crop up.  It is a testimony to Dunn’s skill that he completely integrates into a cast of actual old men.

At the opposite end of the performance spectrum is Arnold Ridley’s Godfrey.  If Dunn is a mass of facial ticks and double takes, Ridley relies on nothing more than his dignified presence and weathered features to milk laughs as the platoon’s senior member, a gentle soul who is always being caught short.  The best Godfrey episode is “Branded”, where it is revealed that he was once a conscientious objector.  Drummed out of the platoon by an aghast Mainwaring, he then saves the captain’s life during a fire drill.  Eventually it turns out that Godfrey is a World War I hero, much as Ridley himself was.  Ironically the frail looking, softly spoken gentleman had the most distinguished military record of the entire cast, having three times been invalidated out of the Great War - including at the Somme - and once again during World War II.

Ridley was a playwright and actor of long standing.  James Laurie, who was even older, was a proud Scot who often stood on his classical acting reputation.  In his youth he had trod the boards as “Hamlet” and “Macbeth” and had worked with all the giants of British stage and screen, particularly film director Michael Powell.  Private Frazer has elements of the stereotypical Scotsman about him - especially when it comes to money - but Croft and Perry incorporate aspects of Laurie’s real life personality as well.  Frazer is the portent of doom as much as Laurie was behind the scenes where the series’ worth and prospects were concerned.  His bitter, withering tongue and nay-saying surface also hide a heart of gold.

Younger actors James Beck and Ian Lavender round out “Dad’s Army”’s core platoon members as, respectively, the shady Private Walker and the molly coddled teenager Private Pike.  When Beck died tragically young, during the sixth season, the show lost more than running gags about the wartime black market.  A cockney, Walker’s presence gives added bite to the class tensions with Mainwaring.  His throw away one-liners in the ranks have an insubordinate edge that’s as sharp if not as bitter as Frazer’s rants.

Lavender’s Pike is a character based unashamedly on Jimmy Perry himself.  At first somewhat over-awed by the acting talent around him, Lavender helps grow Pike over the course of the show’s run to the point where his movie-inspired fantasy life and penchant for dressing up inspire much hilarity.  Lavender’s slapstick rapport with Lowe is one of “Dad’s Army”’s overlooked strengths.  Lowe’s recurring “you stupid boy” catch-phrase is certainly the series’ most treasured and nuanced, benefiting from a slow-burn delivery and Lowe’s impeccable comic timing.

The individual and collective talent of the cast was never equalled in any subsequent Croft and Perry series and nor was the warmth and humanity of characterisation.  Particularly disappointing is the 1980s show “‘Allo ‘Allo” in which Croft collaborated with others to again milk comedy from World War II.  Whereas “Dad’s Army” was based on Perry’s real, first hand experience, reflecting on the foibles of British society when in crisis, “‘Allo ‘Allo” was merely a parody of an earlier television show, “Secret Army”.  It was without fail one dimensional and limited in its humour, with an over reliance on the type of dull innuendo and stock caricatures that date badly today.

In final estimation “Dad’s Army”’s stands the test of time so well because it never fell into the trap of becoming formulaic.  Yes, characters, situations and lines of dialogue are repeated, but within a certain framework there is huge variety of tones, actions and outcomes.  Some episodes play up the physical humour, others are borderline dramatic.  Usually there is a balance between material shot on a sound stage and location work.  Best of all, there is little predictability about the direction or conclusion of individual episodes.  Some leave the platoon hanging in the middle of a messy situation, victims of their own incompetence.  Others have Mainwaring trump his rivals, revealing an expected talent or hitherto unknown ability.

Nowhere is the uniqueness of “Dad’s Army” more evident than in the last ever scene of the last ever episode.  Lance Corporal Jones’ marriage to long standing beau Mrs Fox has been rudely interrupted by an invasion alert, so the platoon turn out to guard the Warmington-on-sea coastline against the Nazi hoards.  Informed by their longstanding nemesis, ARP Warden Hodges, that the immediate danger has past, they are briefly silenced by Hodges’ dismissal of their fighting capabilities.  There is a moment of true poignancy before Mainwaring responds in Churchillian style, stressing that each of his men would do their best.

The subsequent toast to Britain’s wartime spirit - an address to the actual Home Guard as much as the “Dad’s Army” fan base, breaking the ‘fourth wall’ as the cast look straight into the camera - is perhaps unprecedented in the history of television, a moment of direct connection between fictitious characters and their audience, with actors mediating between each.  It makes you want to stand up and cheer at the resilience of the veteran performers as much as at tenacity of the genuine article, the demarcation line between the two completely blurred, so perfectly has the series encapsulated its country’s mythology.