Dad’s Army – The Missing Episodes Review

Today it was announced that Ian Lavender sadly passed away on Friday at the age of 77. Although he had an extensive career, he was undoubtedly best known for playing young Private Pike in every series of the evergreen classic Dad’s Army. He was a wonderful character who was regularly called a “stupid boy” by Captain Mainwaring, and “Don’t Tell Him Pike” will forever remain one of the funniest ever moments in any sitcom.

His passing also means that all of the main cast members of the show are no longer with us, making it a doubly sad milestone. To this day the series is still very popular and regularly repeated, because it was so well written and performed, and was always very funny. It’s no mean feat to maintain the quality over 80 episodes across 9 TV series, along with the radio adaptations, stage show, film and other appearances they did as well, but they made it look easy.

Thankfully, as far as the TV series is concerned, we have nearly all of the episodes to remember them by. There are just 3 episodes from Series 2 and a couple of Christmas sketches that are still missing, as the original tapes were wiped and no other film recordings have since been found.

Consequently, the Gold channel produced live action remakes of the three Series 2 episodes with a new cast in 2019, which were a faithful tribute, but nobody could ever be as good as the original actors (hence I’ve never watched the 2016 film, though I know Ian Lavender and Frank Williams made cameo appearances in it, as a Brigadier and the vicar).

So last year Gold recreated the missing episodes again, along with the Christmas sketches, but this time as animations, using the TV soundtracks or radio adaptations made by the original cast, depending on what still exists. I didn’t see them when they were broadcast last November, but I bought the DVD anyway, as I wanted copies of the episodes with the proper actors, and the extras looked good. So I finally got around to watching it recently, and this is my little review of it all.

Contents

• Episodes
• Extras

Episodes

The animated episodes on the DVD are:

• Christmas Sketch: Poles Apart (10 minutes) – Also known as Santa On Patrol as it doesn’t have an official name. The platoon are on parade on Christmas Day, many of them dressed in Santa outfits for various reasons, where they do exercises with a large telegraph pole, before Mainwaring gives a rousing speech to show his respect for their dedication.
• The Loneliness Of The Long Distance Walker (22 minutes) – Walker is called up for the Army, so the platoon try to find a way to stop it happening, as they rely on his dodgy dealings to get their off-ration luxuries. It’s relatively short as it uses the radio adaptation, which omits sections from the TV version, although they have reinstated a scene in the army camp using Dave Benson, as he was already re-voicing Walker in the rest of the episode anyway (because he sounds more like James Beck than the original radio stand-in, Graham Stark).
• A Stripe For Frazer (30 minutes) – When Mainwaring is given the opportunity to make someone a Corporal, Frazer is upgraded to Lance Corporal to compete against Jones for the position, but the power goes to Frazer’s head. This is the full episode using the TV soundtrack that was animated in 2016, so it has been released on its own before. But Gold commissioned the same animation team to do the rest, to ensure the style remained consistent.
• Under Fire (24 minutes) – During a night watch, the platoon arrest a German man for flashing a light from his house, before an incendiary bomb falls on the church hall. The radio adaptation is used as the audio for this one.
• Christmas Sketch: The Cornish Floral Dance (13 minutes) – A very funny sketch where Mainwaring tries to get his platoon, the air raid wardens and members of the Women’s Voluntary Service to rehearse a performance of The Floral Dance. A live version of this sketch performed at the Royal Variety Performance thankfully does still survive on video, which you can see online.

The 2 Christmas sketches are from Christmas Night With The Stars in 1968 and 1970 respectively. The other two sketches the cast made for that show have already been released in video form on the Christmas Specials DVD.

The animations do take some getting used to, I must admit. The characters are recognisable enough and have appropriate mannerisms, but they’re not amazing likenesses either. And given the capabilities of today’s technology I can’t help wishing they looked more realistic, as the line drawings and limited movements do feel a bit flat. It’s also strange hearing different actors (David Benson & Jack Lane) as Walker and Pike, in the cases where James Beck and Ian Lavender weren’t available for the radio adaptations. Their impressions are good, but it’s impossible to be spot on, so you can tell the difference easily.

All that said, however, if you set your expectations appropriately the episodes are still fun to watch, because it is the original cast apart from the slight exceptions noted above, and they are the best we’re ever likely to get. So they’re satisfactory enough that I’m happy to keep them, and I’ve got rid of the Blu-ray of the live action remakes that I had, as I won’t feel the need to watch those again.

Extras

There are 80 minutes of extra features, consisting of:

• Room At The Bottom (33 minutes) – This is the original live action TV episode from Series 3 that was cleverly restored to full colour in 2008, after only being available in black and white for many years, and this is the first time this colour version has been released on DVD. It starts with a 3-minute introduction by Ian Lavender where he talks to Preservation Specialist James Insell about how the episode was restored. Then, in the 30-minute episode itself, Mainwaring is demoted because he was never officially a captain in the first place, and Wilson is left in charge of the platoon, until a fierce new drill sergeant takes over.
• Newsnight (6 minutes) – A 2008 report about the colour restoration of Room At The Bottom, including the reaction of the show’s creator Jimmy Perry.
• Missing In Action (22 minutes) – An insightful documentary about how the animations were created. While I have mixed feelings about how they look, I still admire the hard work involved in making them.
• Animation Test Footage (1½ minutes) – Brief early test footage of Mainwaring for an aborted animation project in 2012, similar in style to the new animations.
• Deleted Scene (3 minutes) – After a few screens of explanatory text, we get a minute-long scene from the lost TV version of The Loneliness Of The Long Distance Walker, that was absent from the radio adaptation, with Mainwaring and Wilson in an air-raid shelter. Because there’s no recording of Arthur Lowe and John Le Mesurier performing it, it’s been re-voiced for this release by David Benson and Jack Lane to give a sense of what it’s like. It’s not a particularly important or funny scene, and their impressions aren’t perfect, but it’s nice to have for curiosity and completion value. I also noticed a typo in one of the text screens as well, as you can see in the image below.

• BBC South Today (4 minutes) – An amusing interview with members of the cast, who stay in character, at a vintage vehicle parade in Brighton in 1974.
• Original BBC1 Continuity Announcements (3 minutes) – Rare home recordings of Ernie Wise introducing the 1968 Christmas sketch, an announcer introducing A Stripe for Frazer in 1969, and a 1977 trail that lists the following evening’s schedule before the channel shuts down with the national anthem.
• Galleries (8 minutes) – A lovely photo gallery of the original cast and the church hall set, plus a slideshow of the character, background and storyboard art from the new animations. They’re accompanied by music from the show’s official soundtrack album, including the uncut version of the theme tune by Bud Flanagan, the closing credits drum march by the Coldstream Guards, Tiggerty Boo by Joe Loss, Fools Rush in by Carroll Gibbons and I’ve Got My Eyes On You by Ambrose. I don’t own the album personally, because I’ve already got the full theme tune, drum march and a couple of other tracks in my collection anyway from other compilations, and I don’t feel that I need the others, as it’s not the sort of music I listen to much. But it all goes with the show perfectly.

• Documents – This is a cool Easter egg not listed on the packaging. If you pop the disc into your computer’s DVD drive, you can access PDFs of the original camera scripts for the three missing Series 2 episodes, around 50-60 pages long each. There’s also a 37-page post-production script for A Stripe For Frazer. And there are short PasB (Programmes-as-Broadcast) records for the other 2 episodes, listing what was actually aired on BBC1 on the evenings they were broadcast, with precise timings and a list of the music tracks used in each episode.

Conclusion

Altogether it’s a pretty nice set. The animations aren’t a replacement for the original episodes, but it’s great to have versions of them featuring the original cast in some form, so they fill the gap well enough. Plus the rare extra features make this well worth getting for any big Dad’s Army fan.