Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #5995 in DVD
• Released on: 2007-11-12
• Rating: Parental Guidance
• Aspect ratio: 1.33:1
• Format: PAL
• Original language: English
• Number of discs: 2

DVD Description
Treasure your favourite Dad's Army Christmas specials on one DVD:
Episodes:
1. A happy wartime Christmas often meant pooling coupons, even for simple festive fare such as shortbread biscuits and shelter cake.
2. Captain Mainwaring arranges for a sherry party for local dignitaries, but during the festivities an unwelcome guest arrives.
3. As Christmas is coming, the Vicar decides to hold a bazaar to raise money for comforts for troops on active duty, and he asks for contributions from the troop.

Customer Reviews

Generous final helping plus Extras
After much speculation and wringing of hands by Dad's Army completists, here is the final installment of the Complete D.A.: three Christmas specials plus an assortment of rare and very welcome extras.

The specials are:

1. Battle of the Giants (1971) 1 hour
2. My Brother and I (1975) 40 minutes
3. The Love of Three Oranges (1976) 30 minutes

The second of these is the famous though little-seen episode where Mainwaring's drunken brother bowls into town: an acting tour-de-force from Arthur Lowe playing both parts.

The extras, for once, do not disappoint. It is as if the BBC has been saving them all up for this last volume and they will be of great interest to fans of the programme:

1. Christmas Night With The Stars: broadcast annually on Christmas night, this was a variety show in which BBC stars performed special mini-versions of their shows, between 10 and 15 minutes long. Featured here are three such appearances (though one has only a soundtrack)

2. Dad's Army - The Passing Years Documentary (1 hour) featuring copious clips and the usual talking heads in the Heroes of Comedy style. Very good.

3. The Coward Revue - early 1970s? (4 minutes) Lowe, le Mesurier and Dunn perform the Coward song from the 1940s Could You Please Oblige us With Bren Gun? - a satire on the Home Guard that anticipated Dad's Army by 20-odd years.

4. Blue Peter - two priceless, in-character appearances by Arthur Lowe (plus John le Mesurier in the first) with John Noakes, Peter Purvis and Leslie Judd

5. Dad's Army On Stage - two items about this highly successful 1975 stage incarnation of the show. First we see filmed segments (4 minutes), shot for Nationwide, live on stage, though with a very badly-dubbed laughter track - includes a brief clip of John le Mes singing A Nightingale Sang in Berkely Square; and 15 minutes of home movie footage filmed and amusingly narrated by Frank Williams (the Vicar) during the tour and featuring brief glimpses backstage and from the wings during a performance.

6. Two public information films featuring the cast learning how to use pelican crossings

Plus a photo gallery and Radio Times article on pdf, which I couldn't access on my computer.

Splendid collection!

the masters
Dads Army is a true great, but like all greats something is missing from the collection. No, not the lost episodes, but the short play performed on the night of a thousand stars, titled Broadcast To The Nation.
If you find it, buy it, a true gem...

An update - 22/11/07,
I purchased this and was very surprised to see not just the special I refer to but the others. To me this Dads Army Special is the true gem of the collection. If you're pondering over it - don't, just buy it!

Comedic heights
Along with Fawlty Towers, Dads Army is the finest TV comedy of any type made in the 1970's. But not even Fawlty Towers could not match Dads Army in the way it ridiculed the British class system, with the unsurpassed performances of Arthur Lowe and John Le Mesurier.

These two are the key to the series greatness. Watching the first of the christmas specials again last night it was the scenes with these two that held my attention and made me laugh a lot the most. Mainwaring is pompous and a deserate social climber, whereas Wilson is laid-back and as is shown in one episode (not on this DVD) has upper-class links. However lets not get carried away. The show is one of the best comedies ever made because of the entire main cast, all of whom add something special to the series.

I recently watched a couple of classic Laurel & Hardy shorts. The comparison with Laurel & Hardy is interesting. Most of the time in both shows you know exactly whats going to happen, because the characters are brilliant creations: Hardy will get hit over the head; Pike will get soaked. Laurel will cry; Mainwaring will look exasperated at one of Jones long stories. You could say everything is very predictable and perhaps that is what makes great film or TV comedy. We seem to love a joke even more when we know its coming!

These three Christmas specials maintain the very high standards the main series set. The extras (as detailed in other reviews) are very good and if you look around you can get this very cheap.