When the third series began on Thursday, 11 September 1969, at 7.30 p.m., Dad’s Army was regarded within the BBC as, in the words of Paul Fox, ‘a banker’.57 Its role now was to win the ratings war, and, during the following few months, that was precisely what it did: scheduled straight after the well-established Top of the Pops, the show regularly drew in an additional two million viewers to BBC1, and averaged a weekly audience of around 12.1 million (three times the size of that attracted to ITV).58 From start to finish, the run was remarkable.
It was a lively and varied series. Some episodes – such as ‘The Day the Balloon Went Up’ (which saw Mainwaring float high and helplessly over the verdant English countryside) – made good use of scenes shot on location, while others – such as the BAFTA-winning ‘Something Nasty in the Vault’ (which saw Mainwaring and Wilson sit side by side with an unexploded bomb on their laps) – exploited the intimacy of a carefully-lit studio. There was also room for gently comical character studies: ‘Room at the Bottom’ revolved around the discovery that Mainwaring was not, in fact, a commissioned officer, and ‘Branded’ revealed that Godfrey had been a conscientious objector during the previous campaign. Other shows were fairly broad, sometimes near-farcical, romps, such as ‘No Spring for Frazer’ (a Croft personal favourite in which the platoon became convinced that a missing butterfly spring had been dropped by the Scot inside the coffin of Mr Blewitt’s recently departed brother. The series finally came to a close on 11 December with ‘Sons of the Sea’, a typically well-constructed episode which began with the usual kind of tension – MAINWARING: ‘Wait a minute – I’ve had an idea!’ WILSON: ‘Now be careful, sir! Please, please, be careful!’ – evolved into an intimate comic escapade – the men bundle together inside a boat, proceed to get lost in thick fog and end up convinced that they have drifted across the Channel – and concluded with the captain finding himself, once again, on the receiving end of a typically English punchline – ‘Quelle est la gare?’ he inquires anxiously of a bowler-hatted man whom he assumes to be an unusually smartly-dressed Frenchman. ‘Eastbourne, actually,’ the man replies politely.
The final episode received the exceptionally high Reaction Index rating of 77, although, as the BBC’s internal report acknowledged, the score was probably intended as a tribute not just to that one particular edition but also ‘to the series as a whole’. It appears that recent, highly improbable, press speculation concerning the BBC’s supposed reluctance to commission another set of episodes had encouraged some viewers to believe that what they had just witnessed was very likely to have been the last of Dad’s Army: ‘It had been an entertaining, warm-hearted series, one that the whole family could watch and enjoy,’ the report concluded, ‘and if this was, indeed, the last show, it was a great pity, as there still seemed plenty of situations to be exploited.’59 Rumours of the show’s imminent demise would, of course, soon prove to be unfounded: Tom Sloan, it is true, had indeed intended, as a routine matter of policy, to sit down after the third series had ended and assess the progress that the programme had made, but, as one of its staunchest supporters, there had never been any serious doubt about his readiness to commission another run.60 Even Paul Fox, the show’s supposed bête noir, chose this moment to confirm in a letter to David Croft his enthusiasm for the programme:
I am sorry it has taken me so long to write a note of thanks to you for Dad’s Army. You made an enormous success of it and, like millions of others, I am only sorry it has come to an end. Temporarily, I hope.
Looking back to that first programme, I am glad to say you were right 100 per cent. Thanks to your persistence – and despite that title change! – the show became a great hit.
To you – and all who’ve been associated with this splendid series – many congratulations and grateful thanks.61
A fourth series duly followed in the autumn of 1970.62 Each member of the platoon, from this point on, would sport a small rectangular badge, bearing the legend ‘CP1’, on the sleeve of his tunic: rather than standing (as it would have done in the real-life Home Guard) for the unit’s location, it served instead as a sly authorial signature – these characters were the property of Croft and Perry. This telling little gesture could not have been better timed, because among the thirteen episodes in this series were examples of Croft and Perry’s writing at its best. In the bitter-sweet ‘Mum’s Army’, for example, Mainwaring was made to live out his very own version of Brief Encounter when, after enduring years of marriage to the unseen, unloving and unlovable Elizabeth, he suddenly meets the fragrant, elegant, gracefully flirtatious Fiona Gray (played by Carmen Silvera). Everything she says and does convinces him that, at long last, he has found his soul mate, and so, when he learns that she is set to leave, he opens up, for the first and probably the final time in his life, and pleads with her to stay:
MAINWARING But – but – I don’t want you to go! The whole pattern of my life has changed. I just live from one meeting to the next.
MRS GRAY I know. And I’m just the same, but it’s the only thing to do. People are talking.
MAINWARING People always talk! Who cares about that?
MRS GRAY But there’s your wife.
MAINWARING Nobody’ll talk to her! Hasn’t left the house since Munich!
MRS GRAY Be sensible, George. You can’t afford scandal and tittle-tattle.
MAINWARING I tell you I don’t care!
MRS GRAY But there’s the bank.
MAINWARING Damn the bloody bank!
MRS GRAY George!
MAINWARING I’m sorry. Look: don’t get on that train. Look, we’ll meet once a week –
MRS GRAY George, you’re making this very difficult for me, but I’ve made up my mind. It’s the only way. (the next departure is announced) There’s my train.
MAINWARING Look, Fiona, I’ve never begged anything from anybody in my life, but I’m begging you not to go.
MRS GRAY I’m sorry, George.63
It was the kind of story, and the kind of tone, that the writers of a situation-comedy will only try when they feel absolutely sure not only of themselves but also of their audience.
‘A. Wilson (Manager)?’ was another episode – equally audacious in its own quiet way – that had a beautifully judged script. One morning in the bank, Mainwaring receives two telephone calls: the first is from Head Office, informing him that Wilson has been made manager of the Eastgate branch of the bank; the second is from Area HQ, informing him that Wilson’s commission has come through. While he is still reeling from these two unexpected blows, the telephone rings again. This time it is the vicar. ‘What are you going to tell me about Wilson?’ snaps Mainwaring. ‘That he’s been made Archbishop of Canterbury?’ When Wilson finally, belatedly, glides in to begin work, Mainwaring is positively apoplectic:
MAINWARING Judas!
WILSON I beg your pardon?
MAINWARING Judas!
WILSON I’m awfully sorry but I don’t quite follow you.
MAINWARING You follow me all right, Wilson – you’ve been following me for years, waiting to step into my shoes!64
Suddenly, all of the resentment that has long been simmering within Mainwaring comes rushing to the boil:
MAINWARING Just because you went to some tuppenny-ha’penny public school!
WILSON Yes, well, I wouldn’t call Meadowbridge that.
MAINWARING Meadowbridge! You know where I went, don’t you? (bitterly) Eastbourne Grammar!
WILSON Well, what’s wrong with that?
MAINWARING Oh, don’t be so patronising about it! I had to fight like hell to go there – and I had to fight even harder to stay there!
WILSON Well, that’s all to your credit.
MAINWARING You never fought for anything in your life! Brought up by a nanny, father something in the City – all you had to do is just sit back and let everything come to you!
WILSON Yes, well, it wasn’t quite as simple as all that.
MAINWARING I’ve been the manager of this bank for over t
en years now. I ought to have gone on to better things years ago. Yet every time I’ve gone for an interview for a promotion it’s always been the same thing: ‘What school did you go to?’ And as soon as I told them, that was that!
WILSON Well, I’m sure that didn’t really influence them!
Things proceed to fall apart: Mainwaring grows increasingly spiteful, Wilson increasingly smug (‘Ambition’s turned his head,’ complains a tearful Mrs Pike), and, as the day of their separation arrives, the two men, like some old warring, soon-to-be-divorced couple, seem intent on saying all of those things that are best left unsaid:
MAINWARING Why are you going now? It’s only Wednesday. You don’t take up your position in Eastgate until Monday.
WILSON Yes, well, I know, but they’ve been having a lot of difficulty over there, sir, you see. The manager’s been called up, and Mr West from the Head Office is going to stay on in Eastgate in order to show me the ropes.
MAINWARING Mr West of Head Office, eh? We are honoured! Why are you travelling in uniform?
WILSON (casually) Well, I don’t know, just sort of, kind of handy, you know.
MAINWARING Rubbish! You’re travelling in uniform so that you can parade up and down the platform looking for salutes!
WILSON (suddenly rattled) And why not? You did!
MAINWARING How do you mean?
WILSON The day you got your new uniform, I followed you.
MAINWARING You followed me?
WILSON Yes, I did! And I watched you go up and down the high street three times looking for a serviceman to salute you, and in the end you had to make do with a sea scout!
MAINWARING Say what you have to say and go.
WILSON (calming down) Well, I’ve just come to say goodbye, sir. I wondered if you’d like to come up to the station and see me off.
MAINWARING I certainly would not! Our relationship ends here and now.
WILSON Oh, really, sir! After all we’ve been through together, for heaven’s sake, can’t we let bygones be bygones?
MAINWARING Don’t try to soft soap me!
Wilson reaches out to shake Mainwaring’s hand, but Mainwaring fails to respond. They salute each other in silence, and then Wilson departs. Mainwaring, however, cannot resist shouting out after him: ‘And if I did look for salutes, at least I did them properly – that salute you just gave me was rotten!’
Wilson’s independence turns out to be brutally brief. On his very first morning as manager, just after he has settled down behind his imposing desk inside his impressive office, the air-raid siren sounds, he leaves to enter the shelter, and then later, when he returns, he finds that the very first bomb to have been dropped on Eastgate has landed on the bank. Searching through the ruins, he comes across the portion of the door that bore his name. He picks it up, reads the plate, ‘A. Wilson, Manager’, thinks to himself for a moment, then tosses it aside and moves on. Mainwaring sounds contrite when he hears the news from Head Office: ‘At nine o’clock the poor chap was manager of a bank and at five past he had no bank to manage.’ He calls Wilson into his office: ‘It’s most unfortunate,’ he tells him. ‘Yes, it is,’ says Wilson. ‘Most unfortunate.’ Mainwaring is clearly sorry, but not that sorry: ‘No – don’t sit down,’ he says coolly. ‘I’m rather busy.’ He hands his sergeant back his stripes – ‘Get ’em sewn on by tonight. That’s all’ – and then Wilson, once he is back on the outside of Mainwaring’s office, looks up wistfully at the name on Mainwaring’s door, sighs softly to himself, and then goes off to serve, once again, in Mainwaring’s platoon.
Both of these episodes dared to make explicit what would normally remain implicit: namely, that Dad’s Army, like any other great situation-comedy, told tales about trapped relationships. Just as Hancock will never shake off Sid, and Harold Steptoe will never extricate himself from Albert, neither Mainwaring nor Wilson will ever be free of the other, nor will either ever escape from the prosaic constraints of Walmington-on-Sea. ‘Dad’s Army needed that enclosed atmosphere,’ David Croft remarked. ‘It forced the characters to keep bouncing off each other.’65 Croft and Perry usually lit this cramped little world from above, so that only the comedy was visible, but, from this fourth series on, they felt confident enough, in certain well-chosen episodes, to light it slightly from an angle, so that, for a moment, the prison bars were free to cast their shadows.
The programme, in many ways, was approaching its peak. There was only an hour-long special in 1971, the delightful ‘Battle of the Giants’ (watched by a record 18,735,500 viewers66). The following year, at 8.30 p.m. on Friday, 6 October, the fifth series commenced. Everything about this remarkable thirteen-week run of episodes – the quality of the writing, acting and direction, the pace, the tone, the rich variety of themes and moods, the carefully choreographed set-pieces, even the choice of locations – seemed to confirm that the show had reached a new level of maturity. The opening episode, ‘Asleep in the Deep’, set the standard for all that was to follow. The conception was simple – most of the platoon (along with Hodges) become trapped in an underground room at the local pumping station (‘We’re entombed!’ cries Frazer); the execution was brilliant – a well-disguised water tank, an obediently leaking pipe and some glorious ensemble acting; and the effect was sublime. When Mainwaring and his men, with the sole exception of the sleepily recumbent Godfrey, responded to the crisis by performing a spirited burst of ‘Underneath the Spreading Chestnut Tree’ (complete with the full range of gestures), it was funny, but, so real had this comic world become, it was also, in a strange but meaningful way, entirely appropriate. The BBC’s Audience Report on the episode was, unsurprisingly, full of positive remarks about ‘one of the funniest series on television’: ‘Quite hilarious; the best laugh we’ve had for ages’; ‘This is what the public wants … just good, clean fun’; ‘It may be the script – or the cast – or a combination of both – but this show is witty – really funny stuff!’. There was plenty of praise for each aspect of the ‘polished’ production, including the performances of the cast as a whole (‘Good old troopers – and very good to watch!’) and Lowe and Le Mesurier in particular (‘their facial expressions need no words’), the costumes, the sets, the general air of authenticity (‘the facts are always so correct’), and even the standard of the make-up.67 It was, quite simply, a programme of the highest quality.
Each subsequent episode in this run was watched, admired, discussed and then cherished as a memory. There was ‘Keep Young and Beautiful’, for example, which saw Mainwaring try on a toupee (‘Oh, it’s awful!’ cries Wilson. ‘Ha-ha-ha! No, no, no, no – it’s awfully good. Awfully good. Oh, dear, oh, dear!’) and Wilson squeeze into a ‘gentleman’s abdominal support’ (‘Watch it,’ Mainwaring retaliates, ‘you might snap your girdle!’). Then there was ‘A Soldier’s Farewell’ (in which Mainwaring occupied the bunk beneath the bulge that was his wife and dreamed that he was Napoleon); ‘Getting the Bird’ (an ultimately rather touching little tale about a mysterious young woman whom Wilson appears to know); ‘The Desperate Drive of Corporal Jones’ (a simple but suspenseful comedy about a soon-to-be bombed barn); ‘If the Cap Fits … ’ (featuring Frazer’s brief but harrowing spell in charge of the platoon); ‘The King Was in His Counting House’ (in which Mainwaring invited his men to visit his home – ‘Tonight, you may call me “George”’ – for an hour or two in ‘a happy carefree, relaxed atmosphere’); ‘All Is Safely Gathered In’ (‘a joyous thing’,68 in the words of David Croft, which saw the platoon help gather in the harvest before succumbing to some particularly potent potato wine); ‘When Did You Last See Your Money?’ (involving Jones, £500 and Mr Blewitt’s recently-stuffed chicken); ‘Brain Versus Brawn’ (which saw Mainwaring’s men endeavour to outwit the ‘younger, fitter chaps’ during a training exercise by disguising themselves as firemen); ‘A Brush with the Law’ (in which the warden, the verger and Captain Square conspired against their mutual wartime enemy – Mainwaring); ‘Round and Round Went the Great Big Wheel’ (feat
uring an elaborately unreliable War Office invention); and, finally, ‘Time On My Hands’ (about a Nazi parachutist entangled on the town hall’s clock tower).
These were the episodes that charmed the broad community. ‘Brain Versus Brawn’, for example, was seen by 18,634,500 people, which would turn out to be the biggest audience, for a regular half-hour edition, in the whole of the show’s nine-year run, and an average of 16.3 million tuned in each week to watch.69 It was excellence – more so than period, or genre, or limited choice – that was responsible for this rare popularity. Adults recognised the real-life roots of the relationships and relished the intelligence of the performances, children warmed to the characters and repeated the catchphrases, and everyone – regardless of age, or sex, or class – understood that this admirably entertaining show was an example of television at its best.
The following year, during the making of the sixth series, both the cast and the crew would be shaken by the premature death of James Beck,70 and, as a consequence, the programme’s near-perfect pattern of progress would suffer some disruption. The close of 1972, however, was a time of celebration: Dad’s Army, that improbable idea, that ‘nice little thing’, had climbed its way right up to the summit.
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