Product Description

The story of a classic television show.

The story of the greatest British sit-com and its enduring appeal by the acclaimed author of MORECAMBE & WISE. In the summer of 1968, BBC1 screened the pilot edition of a situation-comedy about the British Home Guard. It was not widely expected to catch on, but it did. Decades after the final series ended, Dad's Army is still capable of attracting massive audiences whenever and wherever it is repeated and is generally considered to be the finest sit-com this country has ever produced.

Great sit-coms project back into our homes a wryly exaggerated vision of what it is that makes us who we have no choice but to be; when we laugh at Dad's Army we laugh at ourselves. Walmington-on-Sea's community of comic characters was brought to life by a brilliant ensemble of performers who, through a mixture of temperament and design, became more and more like the characters they played. Arthur Lowe, unforgettable as the pompous Captain Mainwaring, had it written into his contract that he should not be obliged to remove his trousers in any scene, and refused to take his script home to study because 'I'm not having that rubbish in the house', while the urbane John Le Mesurier, who relaxed by listening to jazz at Ronnie Scott's and savouring vintage wines and spirits, exhibited an elective affinity for Sergeant Wilson. The writers, in turn, were inspired to make the characters more like the actors.

In DAD'S ARMY acclaimed author Graham McCann provides an entertaining and meticulously researched account of the show's history and an insightful analysis of its enduring appeal. With contributions from the people who planned, produced and performed the programme, and material drawn from the BBC archives, DAD'S ARMY is the definitive story of a very British comedy.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #113442 in Books
• Published on: 2002-09-02
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 304 pages

The Times
'McCann's hugely entertaining book is one to relish.'

The Times
'Plenty of insight, particularly how much each actor resembled his character.'

The Times
'McCann's hugely entertaining book is one to relish.'

Customer Reviews

Dad's Army gets the book it deserves
Unless you crave page after page about the likes of Harold Bennett - the old man who popped up in the odd episode to say things like 'Oi, where's me chicken gorn?' - this book will more than satisfy your curiosity about this wonderful sitcom. It puts the programme in its context, it goes behind the scenes, it analyses the relationships and it celebrates the great writing and acting that made the show so enduringly popular and critically admired. Superb.

'Dad's Army' deserves better...
Sorry folks, but I found this book mostly disappointing. It passes muster as an introduction to the show, but a TV programme of Dad's Army's status merits a `biography' of much greater breadth and detail than we have here. There is lots of stuff about what BBC-Tv executives thought of the show, and about the audience viewing figures that DA purportedly scored. But there is scandalously little about key considerations - for example, the contribution made to the show by supporting characters played by Janet Davies (Mrs Pike), Pamela Cundell (Mrs Fox), and Harold Bennett (Mr Blewitt).
The inter-character dynamics - that to an extent really hold carry forward DA plotlines so seamlessly - are largely unacknowledged in this book. There is scant examination of some of the individual shows that really lifted the sitcom quality out of the genre-rut it was inclined toward in the 1960s and `70s. Croft & Perry crafted scripts that frequently crossed the line into comedy drama, and back into knockabout burlesque, and you couldn't see the joins.
Very little is said about the way in which special effects were used so superbly to comedic effect - such as Series Five's `Asleep In The Deep', which the platoon and Chief Warden Hodges (Bill Pertwee) play a long scene in a waterlogged set. It's nigh impossible to imagine any other TV comedy pulling this off with the aplomb that DA so effortlessly achieved time and again.
Even more annoying are the pointless and irrelevant quotations that Mr McCann is apt to shove under each chapter heading. These serve no real purpose in adding value to the main text.
The recent series-by-series DA DVD releases have revealed beyond doubt just what a pinnacle of creative excellence Dad's Army achieved; it deserves a much more considered tribute than Mr McCann gives.

Awfully good!
This book about the tv show explains how Jimmy Perry first thought up the idea of a sitcom about the Home Guard,and how he came to collaborate with director David Croft and the BBC to create one of the most effective and endearing tv programmes of the past 30 years.The author has clearly double-checked all of his facts(unlike the other writers who've produced books on this topic)and talked to all of the right people.I loved it.