Dad's Army

by Graham McCann

FRAZER I’m a sailor. Chief Petty Officer, R-R-Royal Navy, retired.

  MAINWARING Sign there.

  Godfrey’s old Edwardian good manners came next – MAINWARING: ‘Will you just sign there, will you?’ GODFREY: ‘Oh, I’d love to!’ – followed by Walker’s winking roguishness – MAINWARING: ‘Any previous military experience?’ WALKER: ‘I got a girlfriend in the ATS!’ – and Jones’ reckless enthusiasm – MAINWARING: ‘When did you leave the Army?’ JONES: ‘1915, sir. I was invalided out, sir. The old minces – I couldn’t quite make the focus, you see, sir.’ MAINWARING: ‘Presumably that’s why you’ve signed the table.’ There was just time for the fuse to be lit under the feud between the captain (‘Are you out of your mind? Do you realise that history is taking place in there?’) and the warden (‘In five minutes’ time an ARP lecture is taking place in this ’all!’) before the arrival of the first parade, the first lecture, and the first ‘uniforms’ (LDV armbands) and ‘weapons’ (pouches of pepper). The episode closed with another speech from the round little man:

  Well, we’re making progress. A short time ago, we were just an undisciplined mob. Now, we can deal with tanks. We can kill with pikes, we can make them all sneeze with our pepper – and, after all, even the Hun is a very poor fighter with his head buried in a handkerchief! But remember, men, we have one invaluable weapon on our side: we have an unbreakable spirit to win! A bulldog tenacity that will help us to hang on while there’s breath left in our bodies. You don’t get that with gestapos and jackboots! You get that by being British! So come on, Adolf: we’re ready for you!

  The credits rolled to the sound of the Band of the Coldstream Guards, and then it was all over: the end of the beginning.

  An estimated audience of 7,171,000 had watched the programme (as opposed to the average audience of around 2,020,000 that had preferred BBC2’s Thirty-Minute Theatre production of James Joyce’s Eveline, followed by the Europa current affairs magazine, and the somewhat disappointing audience of 9,797,000 that had persevered with the heavily-publicised Max – a special hour-long edition of the Max Bygraves show – over on ITV).50 The figure represented an encouraging start for a brand new situation-comedy, but, as David Croft realised more keenly than anyone, before the show could build on this promising foundation it would first have to survive the snap reactions of the television critics. ‘You always turn to the papers with trepidation,’ he admitted. ‘It’s always important to get good notices because the executives do read them and sometimes shape their views around them. Thankfully, the BBC, in those days, normally wouldn’t be swayed by adverse criticism – they’d stick with a show, they’d allow it to grow – but, all the same, one could never take that for granted.’51 In 1968, television critics had precious little time to form carefully considered judgements: ‘There were no video tapes of course,’ recalled Tom Stoppard (a ‘fill-in’ critic for the Observer at the time), ‘and I don’t think I went to a single preview screening … One “watched” at home.’52 In those days, as the Daily Mail’s Peter Black observed, reviewers often had ‘to cough up a notice as quickly as a theatre critic’, dictating their copy over the telephone to their respective newspapers before 11 p.m.53 It was not surprising, given the circumstances, that one or two experienced critics responded to the debut edition of Dad’s Army in precisely the same way as they would any new situation-comedy; namely, with caution. Nancy Banks-Smith, for example, told readers of the Sun that the show seemed merely ‘a nice little thing’ – pointing out that the phrase was ‘much used by women to describe someone who’s no competition’ – but she did concede that ‘John Le Mesurier turns in a performance which is almost better than necessary. Nearly persuading you to keep a wary eye on the nice little thing. In case.’54 Sean Day-Lewis, writing in the Daily Telegraph, was similarly circumspect, praising Croft and Perry’s ‘real gift for satire’, but criticising the ‘tendency to go for laughs at all costs, even if they punctured the atmosphere’,55 while Michael Billington of The Times, by contrast, felt that the show seemed ‘afraid of making too much fun of a hallowed wartime institution’, although he also acknowledged that Arthur Lowe’s ‘true, touching performance’ was one that he would ‘return to with pleasure’.56

  What was surprising was the number of critics who were prepared, after viewing just one episode, to predict that the series would be a success. ‘Who could resist,’ declared Mary Malone in the Daily Mirror, ‘the sight of little home guard commander, Mainwaring, harnessing his raggle-taggle fireside fighters into a force bent on the fight to a finish in the true Dunkirk spirit? This make-do-and-improvise war effort is funny and human and nostalgic. This war I’ll watch.’57 The Sunday Telegraph’s Philip Purser praised the programme for ‘the brimming possibilities’ of its subject matter, the ‘nice period style’ and ‘a set of characterisations that have been maturing over a dozen years and in some of the greatest cellars in comedy’,58 while Tom Stoppard said in the Observer that the show was ‘liable to bring a smile and a tear to every lover of England and Ealing’.59 The most positive – and prescient – critic of all, on this occasion, was Ron Boyle, who wrote the following review in the Daily Express:

  I cannot say I cracked a rib, split my sides, or even raised a good hearty belly-laugh, but some instinct is telling me that the BBC is about to come up with a classic comedy series.

  The trouble here with the opening episode was that it had to set a stage for better things to come. I mean – ask anybody under the age of 30 about the LDV and they would probably guess it was some Iron Curtain secret police or a new ingredient that adds magic to soap powder. But now everything is established. The time is shortly after Dunkirk. Britain is ready to fight in her own backyard. Dustbin lid for a shield and broom handle for bayonet. Young viewers are going to treat it as a marvellous send-up. On a par with Batman and Adam Adamant. And then dad is going to clip everybody round the ear and tell them the Local Defence Volunteers really did exist – and so did the spirit of let’s-get-at-them which now raises chuckles, but at the time was so deadly serious.

  The more I think of it I don’t see how this series can fail …

  As the fusspot commander of the local pitchfork brigade, Arthur Lowe immediately scores. A pair of John Lennon spectacles, a toothbrush moustache, a high wing collar and we can forget all about Swindley … and begin to find a soft spot in our TV hearts for Mainwaring, the scourge of the Nazis.

  The script mercifully avoided all the tempting cliché traps. Already I am ready to root for doleful Sergeant Wilson from the bank, Lance Corporal Jones, the doddering old local butcher, Joe Walker, the black marketeer, and all the rest of this motley gang.

  Give it a week or two and I’ll tell you whether this is really comedy’s finest half-hour. All I say now is that the possibilities are tremendous.60

  No new situation-comedy has ever received a more welcoming review from a national newspaper critic. The BBC was entitled to consider Dad’s Army an immediate critical success.

  The public, it seemed, also approved. Letters in praise of the programme began to trickle in, and the BBC’s own sober-minded and scrupulous Audience Research Department produced a positive report. Although some members of the sample audience felt that the script was overly irreverent (‘Very true to life,’ commented one middle-aged viewer, ‘but I didn’t care for the lampooning of the LDV. Everything in the early days of the war had its funny side, but not buffoonery like this’), the majority judged the opening episode to have represented ‘a very promising start to a series whose basic theme had considerable potentialities for comedy’. The report noted that viewers seemed particularly impressed by the programme’s exceptional attention to detail: ‘Such a true picture of village and smalltown preparations against Hitler,’ said one; ‘Typical of what went on in those days,’ observed another. ‘Settings, costumes (“complete with gas masks”) and make-up were also exactly right,’ the report added, ‘and the episode caught the 1940 atmosphere well, with many “authentic touches” … (As one delighted
viewer remarked: “this play forgot nothing”.)’61 The show received a Reaction Index – a figure, based on the results of completed questionnaires, which the BBC took as a sign of the general reaction of an audience to one of its programmes – of 63 (out of 100) which was good for a brand new situation-comedy (the very first episode of Hancock’s Half Hour, for example, only received a Reaction Index rating of 52),62 and virtually assured the series of considerable internal encouragement.

  The circuit had been completed: the bulb had lit up. Dad’s Army had arrived.

  CHAPTER V

  Series One

  There are difficulties and there are failures. The aim, however, is not to avoid failure – the aim is to give triumph a chance.

  HUW WHELDON1

  They came, they saw, they laughed. Leave it alone.

  NAT HIKEN2

  ‘It didn’t feel as if we’d made a particularly auspicious start,’ Ian Lavender remarked. ‘There was no sudden realisation – “Oh! People like it! We’re a massive success!” – it was more of a slow dawning. Like Topsy, it “just growed”.’3 None of the cast and crew was willing to take anything for granted. The transmission of the first series, in the minds of those who made it, was like a six-week-long trial: all that they could do, now that the run had begun, was to sit back, be patient, and hope for a favourable verdict.

  Croft and Perry had been prudent: they had written the series in such a way that, in terms both of tone and of structure, it would make as much sense (in the unhappy event of a cancellation) as a self-contained six-part story as it would (in the happy event of a second commission) as the start of an open-ended sequence of episodes. The time-frame they had chosen ran from mid-May to late August 1940 – in other words, from the formation of the LDV to the climax of the Battle of Britain. Each programme – prefaced by the same style of explanatory ‘newsreel’ – moved the action on a little further into that first uncertain summer: the opening episode marked the sudden birth of the volunteer force; the second focused on the subsequent scramble to find or design a range of makeshift weapons; the third – set near the end of July – featured the change of name from ‘LDV’ to ‘Home Guard’, as well as the late arrival of a limited supply of First World War rifles; the fourth covered the methodical scanning of the skies for signs of imminent invasion; the fifth saw the belated delivery of uniforms, as well as the introduction of stricter controls over training and battle drill; and the sixth and final episode came to an apt but imaginary conclusion with a visit to Walmington-on-Sea from none other than Winston Churchill himself. ‘If I’d had any conception that the show was going to run for nine series,’ Croft reflected, ‘I would have moved things forward at a slower pace. I would have held back the acquisition of arms, for instance, because it was very funny when all they had were picks and shovels and forks and carving knives on the end of sticks and all of those sorts of things. I could have run that theme for three or four more programmes at least. But one wasn’t sure how long the series was going to last – in fact, the general feeling was that, at best, it probably wouldn’t run for more than three series – so one had a sense of urgency to get on with it.’4

  The BBC, however, was quick to reassure Croft that, as Bill Cotton put it, the show ‘would be given plenty of time in which to breathe’.5 The most tangible sign of this commitment came on 7 August 1968 – the date of the second broadcast – in the form of a contract for a second series. It was precisely the kind of well-timed encouragement – and well-placed publicity – that any programme-maker craved.

  The second episode, entitled ‘Museum Piece’, went out earlier than usual at 7 p.m. (BBC1 had won the rights to screen a high-profile football match, the European Fairs Cup Final, later that evening), but, thanks in part to the disruption the ACTT’s industrial action was continuing to cause to the schedules over on the commercial channel, the programme still managed to attract an audience of 6,817,500 – more than twice the size of that drawn to the movie Ride the High Iron on ITV.6 That week’s plot revolved around ‘Operation Gun Grab’, Mainwaring’s impetuous plan to requisition a cache of antique firearms from the town’s Peabody Museum of Historical Army Weapons; much of the comedy came from the fact that, before the guns could be grabbed, the platoon first had to find a way past the obstinate and surprisingly devious caretaker, one George Jones, the 88-year-old, thrice-married, irascible father of Jack. The critical response was, once again, encouraging – Richard Last, writing in the Sun, judged the show to be ‘as good a comic idea for television as anyone has had recently’7 – and so, increasingly, was that of the viewing public.

  The approving letters continued to arrive on a daily basis at Television Centre. Many simply congratulated the BBC on the quality of the series: ‘Each edition of this programme gets better,’ enthused one correspondent. ‘At last we have something that all the family can watch, delightful humour, and at the same time drawing attention to the British characteristics of which we all can be justly proud. I watch with my teenage family. They know nothing of these daft days but they enjoy the programme just the same.’8 Others complimented the programme-makers on their attention to detail: ‘Unless you were actually a member of the H.G. in its early stages,’ remarked one old soldier, ‘I can’t think where you got the ideas.’9 David Croft even received an admiring note from a fellow professional, Barry Took, describing Dad’s Army as ‘one of the funniest shows I’ve ever seen on TV’: ‘The script, casting, and direction are absolutely great,’ Took wrote. ‘Hope the series gets all the success it deserves.’10 Only a couple of letters, at this early stage, were in any way critical of the programme, and both of these objected only to the volume of the studio audience’s laughter.11

  The most striking, and gratifying, aspect of this early correspondence was the extent to which the show seemed to have captured the imagination of so many people so quickly. Some of these viewers wrote in to say how much the character of Captain Mainwaring, or Sergeant Wilson, or one or more of the other members of the platoon, had reminded them of someone they had served alongside, or under, in the real-life Home Guard. Others sent in story suggestions – and in some cases full-length scripts – as well as offers of old uniforms, brassards, buttonhole badges and even authentic wartime vehicles.12 ‘That was all very heartening,’ reflected David Croft. ‘It certainly made one feel one was on the right track.’13

  Episode 3 – broadcast on 14 August back in its regular 8.20 p.m. slot – was in many ways the strongest one yet. Entitled ‘Command Decision’, it concerned Mainwaring’s often risible but sometimes rather touching desire to win the respect of his men. Realising that the absence of any arms other than pikes, pitchforks and catapults (‘They’ll be using conkers next!’) is prompting morale to plummet right down to rock bottom, he instructs a sceptical Wilson to assure the platoon that proper weapons will arrive ‘before the week is out’. Jones, upon hearing this, is almost overcome with emotion: ‘I don’t know what we’d do without you, Mr Mainwaring. You’re our inspiration!’ Mainwaring, clearly touched by this response, smiles benignly. Alone inside his office, he allows himself to sport the suspicion of a self-satisfied smile: ‘The hour, and the man,’ he says to himself softly. The following day, at the bank, he shows off his growing sense of self-assurance to his irritatingly irenic assistant: ‘We’re very slow to rouse in this country,’ he informs Wilson. ‘We don’t like wars and bloodshed. But once we knuckle down to it, we fight better than anyone else in the world!’ Wilson reminds him that it was, nonetheless, really rather rash of him to gamble on getting any guns before the end of the week, but Mainwaring remains unrepentant. Then, however, the blustering and brashly aristocratic Colonel Square (Geoffrey Lumsden) makes the first of what will prove to be many rude interventions, promising the platoon twenty rifles provided that ‘Mainwearing’ steps down and hands over the command to him. Mainwaring, grudgingly, agrees, only to find himself back in control once the combined shock of Square’s wildly dictatorial demeanour and his ancient-looking
muskets has driven the men back in his direction. Almost immediately, he slips once again into an acceptance of his old sense of destiny, reciting Kipling to himself and sounding more Churchillian with each passing inflexion. He knows, however, that unless those rifles arrive he faces abject humiliation. When, just in time, a modest supply is delivered, he is ecstatic: ‘Their trust in their leader was not misplaced!’ he declares, and, with his chest puffed up with pride, he rushes out to his men and receives their cheers.

  Arthur Lowe’s performance was as accomplished as anyone was likely to have seen on any channel, and in any genre, during the whole of that week. It was clever, crafty, entirely lacking in vanity and thoroughly generous: in every scene, in every line-up, he listened to each character as they spoke, reacting silently with arched eyebrows, rounded eyes, a weary rub of the face or a sudden moue of the mouth, highlighting the humour in each of the shots where he was absent. ‘He was thoughtful,’ Ian Lavender confirmed. ‘He’d help you. In fact, after the first series, Arthur came over to me, very discreetly, you know, and said: “I know you don’t have a lot to do, so get yourself a funny costume and just come and stand next to me.” So in those early episodes you can see shots of me standing next to Arthur, saying nothing and looking stupid!’14 It was in shots such as these, occurring most often as Mainwaring came to pause during his walk along the line, that the audience first came to know, and understand, and believe in each character:

  MAINWARING Pike! I told you yesterday: no mufflers on parade! You don’t see Grenadier Guards wearing mufflers, do you, sergeant?

  WILSON Well, I never really thought to look, sir.

  MAINWARING Of course you don’t!

  PIKE Well, I got a note from me mum, sir.

  MAINWARING Note? I’m not interested in notes! You’re in the Army now, Pike!