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.
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