Pillow Talk (Doris Day, Rock Hudson)

(Amazon UK link)

A few months ago we were offered first refusal on a large number of DVDs belonging to a friend, who was downsizing. Most of them were classics. We accepted about twenty, thinking they would be interesting to watch even though we had never heard of most of them. The one we decided to watch last night was ‘Pillow Talk’, a film from 1959 although it was in colour. 

Doris Day stars as Jan, an independent young woman who works as an interior designer in New York. She lives in an apartment where she’s quite comfortable. Except for one problem... Her telephone is on a ‘party line’ with a man called Brad Allen, who is a serial womaniser. A tad ironic, perhaps, that Brad is played by Rock Hudson, whom I had not heard of until the 1980s when he died.

Jan needs her phone for business calls, but every time she picks it up, she hears Brad flirting with another woman. He works as a songwriter, and tells each woman that she is his inspiration. Jan becomes more and more annoyed, even going to the phone company to see if they can do something about it.

What she doesn’t know is that Brad is close friends with Jonathan (Tony Randall), one of her clients. Jonathan is very keen on Jan, and keeps trying to persuade her that she should marry him. He really doesn’t want Brad to meet Jan due to his reputation for attracting every personable woman around…

When Brad spots Jan with Jonathan, he is very drawn to her. So when he meets her again he adopts a completely different persona, that of a country hick from Texas who always behaves like a gentleman. Rock Hudson does this switch extremely well, and there’s plenty of humour in the way he gently woos Jan…

Of course there’s the inevitable discovery of his treachery, and an eventual happy (if rather rapid) conclusion after she has taken unusual revenge. But it’s a good story, light-hearted and somewhat ridiculous but the ‘comedy of errors’ situation is well done. There are even extra amusing scenes when Brad takes refuge in places where he shouldn’t have been. And there are also humorous incidents involving Jan’s maid Alma (Thelma Ritter) who is outspoken, and has a drinking problem. We didn’t laugh aloud, but we both smiled several times. 

As a light-hearted evening’s viewing, it worked well. The acting is, of course, American 1950s style, rather caricatured and unrealistic. But that didn’t matter. We didn’t have any trouble with the accents, as I sometimes do with American films, but then the New York accent is quite mild. 

There are several songs in the film, but it’s not a musical. Nobody stops the action to break out into singing and dancing. Instead some of the songs are those written by Brad, and some are sung in a bar or elsewhere. They add to the film in a positive way, I thought. 

I was a little surprised that the rating for this film is PG. Although there’s no nudity or anything overt, there are a lot of innuendoes and implications. The main story, after all, involves Brad attempting to get Jan into bed without her knowing who he is. There’s also an unpleasant scene where a young man tries repeatedly to assault her in a car, and another where, due to a misunderstanding, another character is punched in the face. 

It’s not something I would want to show to children or teens, but then I can’t imagine that this would be of the slightest interest to anyone under the age of at least fifteen or sixteen. 

Recommended if you like rather risqué lightweight1950s American comedies.

Review copyright 2024 Sue's DVD Reviews

Emma mini-series (Romola Garai)

(Amazon UK link)

I have mentioned to various people that I liked the 1990s film version of Jane Austen’s Emma a great deal more than I liked the book. But I had no idea that there was another version of Emma made for the screen: a TV mini-series, made by the BBC in 2009. Some relatives gave it to me for my birthday a few months ago, and we decided to start watching it last week. As the entire thing is almost four hours long - with two DVDs in the box - we agreed to watch it on two separate evenings. 

The series starts with a bit of background in Emma’s life. Whereas the book only touches on it lightly, we see Emma as a baby, then a toddler. Her mother died when she was young and her father - the late Michael Gambon is wonderful in the role - becomes very over-protective of his two daughters. By contrast, two other orphaned motherless children in the neighbourhood, Jane Fairfax and Frank Churchill, are sent away to live with relatives. 

Isabella and Emma grow up in the large stately home known as Hartfield, where they lack nothing. Their governess, Anne Taylor (Jodhi May), lives with them and is treated more like a family member than a servant. In the book, she has just got married when the story opens; Isabella is already married to a family friend called John Knightley. In this mini-series, we see Emma predicting that Isabella and John will fall in love. We then see her introducing Anne to another family friend, Mr Weston, certain they are right for each other. 

Emma is decidedly self-centred and strong-willed, but at twenty-one she’s very good at running the household and is devoted to her hypochondriac father. And although she doesn’t want to get married herself, she becomes convinced that she’s a natural matchmaker. Romola Garai is perfect in the role, in my opinion. She’s lively, and outgoing, but she can be outspoken. That she might sometimes be wrong, however, has not occurred to her.

Emma decides to make friends with a young woman called Harriet who attends a local school for orphans. It’s rumoured that Harriet is the illegitimate offspring of a nobleman, and Emma is modern enough to feel that Harriet should not be punished for her parents’ behaviour. Harriet is in love with a local farmer, but Emma feels that she’s made for higher things… in particular, the new and rather handsome clergyman, Mr Elton. 

Apparently Jane Austen deliberately made Emma somewhat dislikable to her readers, and in a sense this mini-series veers away from that. Despite her faults, Emma has a great deal of charm and vivacity, and she can be very generous. Her neighbour Mr Knightley (brother of Isabella’s husband) has been her mentor for many years. He regularly criticises Emma for things she has done wrong or thoughtlessly, and on the whole she takes it well. Mr Knightley is played to perfection by Johnny Lee Miller. 

It’s a bit of a comedy of misunderstandings; it’s also something of a coming-of-age story for Emma. She slowly becomes aware that she is fallible, and that sometimes people need to choose their own marriage partners. Love, she discovers, can’t be turned off and on, and needs to find its own path. She finds it hard to accept other people’s intuitions or instincts, convinced that she understands better than anyone. 

I had wondered how the book, condensed into 90 minutes for the film, could be expanded to fill four full episodes of nearly an hour each. But it didn’t drag at all. I very much liked the extra parts at the beginning, showing Emma growing up. They were totally in keeping with the spirit of the book. There are one or two places where I felt that a shot of people smiling or laughing was perhaps a little too long, but it didn’t matter. There’s a ball, and a picnic, both of which are given a good amount of time: not so little that they seem rushed, but not so much that they drag out. 

There’s some beautiful scenery, and many shots of people walking. There are a few extra scenes too, such as a snow-fight which I don’t recall from the book, which don’t feel at all out of place. I don’t recall the book in detail as it’s a while since I read it, but nothing struck me as out of place, and I couldn’t remember anything that was left out. It’s all set firmly in the correct era, the early part of the 19th century when it was written. The details of the sets and the costumes are superb - there are ‘extras’ on the DVDs giving insights into both. 

The language, too, is that of Jane Austen. And yet.. the whole has an oddly up-to-date feeling to it, at the same time. Perhaps it’s that human nature really doesn’t change. Emma sometimes looks like a 21st century person in 19th century dress, as do others of the cast; but I think this was probably deliberate on the part of the series producers. Jane Austen, after all, did not write ‘historical’ fiction. She wrote contemporary novels, based on people she knew and situations that would have felt quite ordinary to her. Her characters are slightly caricatured, but very much alive, and that comes over in this mini-series. 

All in all, we thought this a wonderful adaptation of ‘Emma’, one I would recommend very highly, although Austen purists might prefer a more traditional adaptation. 

Review copyright 2024 Sue's DVD Reviews

ET: The Extra Terrestrial (Henry Thomas)

(Amazon UK link)

It’s nearly twelve years since we last watched the classic film ‘ET’. We wanted something light to relax to last night, but didn’t feel like either a musical or a rom-com. So ‘ET: The Extra-Terrestrial’ was ideal. 

We remembered the story, of course. We first saw it at a cinema when it came out in the early 1980s. Our DVD is a 20th anniversary issue; the film had some changes made in the animating and processing which fixed some problems that the director, Steven Spielberg, found irritating back in the 1980s. But I wouldn’t have noticed. 

I had recalled the moment when young Elliot (masterfully played by nine-year-old Henry Thomas) met the little alien. But I had no memory of the first part of the film, where there’s a bit of backstory. We see a spaceship landing in a deserted area, and several shadowy beings including one who is apparently searching for plants. And then the spaceship takes off, leaving someone behind…

We also see a family scene: several children playing a board game in a kitchen - I gather it was Dungeons and Dragons, which was popular at the time. Their conversation relates to the game and it’s not clear what they’re saying, but it doesn’t seem to matter. Elliot’s mother Mary (Dee Wallace) is in the background, half aware of them. We learn later that one of the children is Elliot’s teenage brother Michael (Robert MacNaughten) and the others are local friends. 

Someone orders a pizza and Elliot goes out to collect it, only to be terrified by what he finds…

I do recall that the early part of the film was spooky and quite frightening when I first saw it at the cinema, and had no idea what was coming. This time, of course I knew that ET wanted to be friendly, but it was still quite a tense opening. It felt a bit long - if the film was made today, it would have been much more tightly edited, and probably only an hour and a half rather than close to two hours long. 

There’s plenty of humour as Elliot gradually gets to know the little alien, and as ET learns to communicate. Elliot’s siblings Michael and Gertie (Drew Barrymore aged six) are introduced to him, but he is kept a secret from their mother. They’re pretty sure she wouldn’t approve. And there are some rather tense cameo scenes showing the legs and feet of men prowling around, trying to find signs of ET, converging on the family home. 

It’s a beautifully made film, poignant as well as having some quite funny scenes. We didn’t laugh aloud but I smiled several times, and found myself totally caught up in the story. Even though I knew roughly what was coming, I found myself tensing as ET is discovered. The scientists, in full hazmat suits with anti-contamination tents around, try to discover why Elliot and ET seem to have developed a psychic bond. It’s making Elliot weaker as ET himself struggles to survive in what is to him an alien environment. 

I hadn’t really thought about how ET was created, in the days long before CGI, and had forgotten entirely that I had previously seen the 'making of' extra. So it was very interesting to watch the documentary on the second DVD, where Spielberg and others recount the immense detail that went into making the physical ET. Indeed, there were several ETs, controlled in different ways, including ET ‘costumes’ which were donned at times by actors. It was the apparent realness of the little alien that made the young actors react so very believably, with shock, or terror, or tears as appropriate.

It’s an excellent film, one which the cast and crew felt great satisfaction in making, according to the ‘making of’ documentary. Nobody knew whether it would be a success or a flop, as nothing quite like it had been made before. But it was an immense success, and I’m very pleased we’ve seen it again. Perhaps we’ll watch it another time in a decade or so.  

Highly recommended to adults and children. It’s rated PG rather than U because there are some instances of minor bad language, and also because of some intense, potentially scary or disturbing scenes. I don’t think I would show it to anyone under the age of about nine or ten, but a lot depends on the child’s maturity levels. 

Review copyright 2024 Sue's DVD Reviews

Matilda (Mara Wilson)

(Amazon UK link)

We were both feeling a bit tired yesterday evening. We wanted to watch a film that was light, undemanding and not too long. We realised that although we had owned the film of ‘Matilda’, based on Roald Dahl’s book for children with the same title, we had never seen it. So that’s what we chose. 

‘Matilda’, made in 1996, stars Mara Wilson in the title role. She was nine at the time, and clearly already an accomplished and confident actor. I knew the outline of the story, which I read more than once when my sons were small, but I hadn’t remembered the details. And the film, inevitably, has a more visual approach than the book. It’s also set in the United States rather than the UK, with American accents rather than British ones. But although that disturbed me slightly at first, I quickly got used to it. 

So it starts with Matilda’s dreadful parents, Mr and Mrs Wormwood. They are brilliantly played by Danny DeVito and Rhea Pearlman (who was his wife in reality as well as in this film). They are caricatured slobs, in the best Roald Dahl style. Mr Wormwood is a used car salesman who buys stolen car parts and cheats his customers. Mrs Wormwood uses a lot of makeup and dyes her hair, and spends her afternoons playing bingo. 

Matilda has an older brother, Michael, who is likely to follow in his father’s footsteps. But her parents have no interest in her. And the film shows this: Mr Wormwood wonders if he can send her back after she’s born, and basically ignores her. She’s left home alone from a very young age, and quickly becomes self-sufficient. We see a younger Matilda dressing herself at age two, teaching herself to read all the family’s magazines at age three, and then daring to ask her father for a book to read when she is four.

When this is refused, the action moves to the library, and eventually she starts school. She has a lovely class teacher, Miss Honey (Embeth Davidtz).  But the school headmistress is the dreadful villain Miss Trunchbull (Pam Ferris), who terrorises the children, and makes examples of any who dare to stray outside her strict rules. She’s a former athlete who thinks nothing of throwing a child around by their hair and out of the window…

If it were taken seriously this would be a terrible catalogue of abuse. But the action is so exaggerated, Miss Trunchbull so horrendously caricatured, that it feels like fantasy rather than reality. and Pam Ferris plays the part to perfection (or whatever is the unpleasant equivalent). As one of the children comments, they can’t complain because their parents would not believe that a school head could be so appalling.

Matilda is highly intelligent, already reading Charles Dickens and other classics, and doing complex arithmetic in her head. And she also realises that when anyone gets angry with her, she has strange magical powers that can move objects. At first this happens a bit randomly but she manages to train it. 

The acting from the villains is all overdone, but then that’s the way Dahl’s books work. Danny DeVito is the director as well as playing Mr Wormwood, and he sticks pretty closely to the story.  I read the book this morning to see just how close it was. There are a few changes made, which probably work better from the point of visual continuity. There are some extra scenes in the film, too, such as a delightful sequence where Matilda dances in her living room as she moves blinds, pictures and other objects without touching them. 

There’s also a lengthy sequence when Matilda and Miss Honey venture inside Miss Trunchbull’s house. It’s entirely in Roald Dahl’s style and fits well with the overall story, adding some action and tension, and also some humour. And there are scenes in Mr Turnbull’s garage, whereas the book just describes him talking to his son about what he does. I thought it a very good balance of following the book closely and adding in new scenes that demonstrate people’s characters or behaviours in ways that wouldn’t work in a book.

We were engrossed in the story right from the start, and even though I knew it would end satisfactorily, there are some quite stressful moments. The images of Miss Trunchbull glaring at children, her face distorted close to the camera, demonstrate brilliantly how the children might have seen her. 

The rating for this film is PG, which makes sense. Most children would probably find it funny, with Miss Trunchbull taking the place of a vicious dragon or other monster of fantasy stories. But some might find her disturbing, particularly her worst punishment - the ‘chokey’ - and others might be upset at the way Matilda’s parents are so neglectful. So parental guidance is recommended; ideally a parent should watch this with a sensitive or young child seeing it for the first time. 

But with that proviso, I would definitely recommend it.  Particularly for children who have enjoyed the book. 

Our DVD came with a few ‘extras’, which surprised us.  One required re-watching the film to be able to see how the 'magic' scenes were made, and we did see a few of those, which were quite interesting, but we didn't want to see it all again. One 'extra' was an ironic and mildly amusing list of etiquette rules, illustrated (or not!) by snippets from the film. 

Another of the extras was about libraries, perhaps for children who weren't familiar with them. Oddly, the librarian was portrayed as rather a scary-looking woman with bright red lips and a face that came too close to the camera, almost like Miss Trunchbull, though clearly the librarian was a likeable person.  And the final extra that we watched was a rather wobbly video made by Mara Wilson herself. 

Review copyright 2024 Sue's DVD Reviews

Doctor Who 60th Anniversary Specials (David Tennant)

(Amazon UK link)

I had been looking forward for a while to seeing the Doctor Who 60th anniversary special episodes. I knew - from social media - that the tenth Doctor, David Tennant, was returning for these three episodes. He was my favourite of the ‘new’ series Doctor Who. 

When I heard that Donna (Catherine Tate) was also returning, I was intrigued to know how this was possible. The last time we saw Donna, her memory was altered so she would not remember any of her travels with the Doctor. The alternative was for her to die…

Jodie Whittaker’s 13th Doctor regenerated into David Tennant’s 14th Doctor at the end of the 2022 specials, which we watched in May. I know this was a  surprise when it was first broadcast, since Ncuti Gatwa had been announced as the next Doctor. But since we are not in the UK, we had to wait for the DVDs. So we knew this would happen. 

The 60th Anniversary set contains three DVDs. Each one holds one episode of about an hour, plus a lot of feature ‘specials’. We watched one per week; we didn’t manage all the extra features, but very much appreciated the insights into the production of the show that we saw in the first ones on each disc. 

The Star Beast

The first episode, ‘The Star Beast’, sees the 14th Doctor landing in the UK in the 21st century, only to come across Donna. He tries to hide from her, not wanting to trigger any memories, but inevitably they end up in her house after a spaceship crashes nearby. Years have passed since he last saw her, and she now has a husband and teenage daughter Rose. Rose is clearly very bright, and creative. She meets an alien called The Meep, who reminded me a bit of ET at first…

It’s an exciting story with plenty of twists and turns. There’s fast action at times, but to my surprise I followed the story without problems. In some of the previous episodes, I found the storylines confusing, and had to turn away at some of the shooting scenes. But ‘The Star Beast’ held me captivated, and felt as if it had more of an interesting story than some of the recent series. 

I also loved the way that David Tennant, who is such a great actor, seemed to be channelling some of the quirks and energy that Jodie Whittaker portrayed in her incarnation.  

Wild Blue Yonder

The second episode, ‘Wild Blue Yonder’, sees the tardis out of control, taking the Doctor and Donna to the edge of the universe and then abandoning them in what is apparently an empty spaceship. There’s a cute, if rather rusty robot, taking very slow steps in a long corridor. The Doctor tries to figure out what is going on, and it’s quickly clear that there are imperfect copies of both The Doctor and Donna in scenes that are both amusing and rather creepy.

In contrast to the first episode of specials, The Doctor and Donna (and their copies) are the only characters involved and the entire story takes place inside the unknown spaceship. It was fascinating learning how it was created on the first of the features on this DVD. Once again, this is a tense episode, but, as with the first one, I had no trouble following it. I appreciated the asides and conversations that happened, as well as the story itself. 

At the end of the second episode, the tardis manages to return to the UK. They are met by a very frail Wilf, Donna’s grandfather, in what turned out to be the actor Bernard Cribbins’ last appearance. He assures them that the rest of Donna’s family are safe, and asks for help as the world seems to be ending…

The Giggle

The third and final 2023 special, ‘The Giggle’, follows on from that. Life is in chaos because everybody suddenly thinks they are right about everything. Drivers stop obeying traffic laws, pedestrians believe they have the right to walk down the street, people say exactly what they think and want without any filters. Alongside this, we’re taken back to 1925 where a young man buys a puppet from a strange shopkeeper with a fake German accent, who is clearly not who he appears to be. Neil Patrick Harris is superb as The Toymaker, and plays a major part in this episode.

Once again this is an episode with a lot of story; there’s a bit of history involving John Logie Baird and the beginnings of television and a clever plot that, while rather far-fetched, was also straightforward enough for me to follow it. And at the end, while I was sure that Ncuti Gatwa would eventually appear, I was surprised - and pleased - to find that even the regeneration had a twist.

I expected to like these three episodes because of David Tennant and Catherine Tate, and they certainly provided superb leads. It was an unexpected bonus to have such good and memorable stories. They are excellent anniversary specials and I’m so pleased that we finally managed to see them.

We have now caught up, as far as is possible, since the next series is still being broadcast. And ‘The Giggle’ ends with an entirely satisfactory scene which, for me, made it feel almost as if this was the end. I know it isn’t, and that we will, no doubt, continue to acquire further DVDs of Doctor Who. But we’ve decided that, before we do, we’ll re-watch all the ‘new’ series from 2005 onwards.  That’s 150 episodes in all, so if we only watch one per week it will take us three years.

The 60th Anniversary DVD set is excellent, one of my favourites so far. Each episode is complete in itself, but with so much backstory referred to that it would be very confusing to anyone who has not seen at least some of the earlier episodes involving the Tenth Doctor and Donna.

Definitely recommended to anyone who is a fan of Doctor Who.

Review copyright 2024 Sue's DVD Reviews

Loving You (Elvis Presley)

(Amazon UK link)

While we did, of course, know of Elvis Presley as a famous American singer, I don’t think I had realised that he was also quite a talented actor. I probably wouldn’t have come across the film ‘Loving You’, had it not been offered as a freebie in a UK newspaper many years ago. A relative acquired it, and passed it on to us. It’s taken us more than a decade to get around to watching it, but we finally did so yesterday evening.

The film was made in 1957, when Elvis would have been in his early twenties. He stars in this film as Deke Rivers, a young man who was orphaned young and grew up in a children’s home. He’s finally managed to secure a job in a delivery company, and wants to keep it. He’s somewhat shy, but is persuaded to sing in a small country show, and it’s clear that he has a lot of talent.  

Glenda (Lizabeth Scott) is the other main character: she’s an attractive but tough-minded woman who works as a press agent for a politician. When she hears Deke singing, she decides to work for her ex-husband Tex (Wendell Corey) who runs a band, if he will include Deke as an extra member.

Inevitably there are a lot of Elvis songs in this film, but it’s not a typical musical as the songs only happen when the band are on stage. Nobody breaks into song and dance at other times. Well, other than when Deke is persuaded to sing in a restaurant. There’s a low-key love interest, as the girl singer in the band becomes close to Deke, and there’s also a lot of romantic tension between Glenda and Tex.

But there’s a great deal more than that. Glenda is quite manipulative, often at the expense of Deke’s happiness; she persuades people to behave in specific ways so as to gather extra publicity. And she pretends to be a lot more interested in him as a man than she really is. 

Deke is a well-rounded character - we were very impressed with Elvis Presley’s acting - whom we could quite believe in. He’s in a world he knows little about, surrounded by people who insist they have his best interests at heart. He is lonely, longing for a real friend, and isn’t entirely sure who to trust. Nor does he know whether he wants stardom, when he was happy being a small part of a band. 

I understand that the storyline somewhat mirrored Elvis’s own journey into becoming a musical legend, although he was not an orphan, and was close to his parents as a young adult. But he was, apparently, quite shy as a teenager; perhaps that’s why his character seems so authentic. 

There are some deeper themes touched upon lightly, which I thought were well handled in this film. In particular, a passionate plea is made for understanding by the older generation who considered rock and roll to be disgraceful, with a well-crafted argument that is quite persuasive. 

There’s a bit of violence in the film, involving some fist fights as well as some general public rioting; but nothing gory. There are some quite passionate kisses too, and implications about nights spent together, but nothing explicit is shown. There’s some minor bad language, but nothing too shocking.  This is probably why it’s rated U although the storyline wouldn’t be of the slightest interest to children. 

Neither of us is a huge fan of Elvis music, though we don't dislike it. From the perspective of 2024 it feels nostalgically old-fashioned and quite tame by contrast with some of today’s trends in music. We were surprised at how much we liked this film. 

Recommended. 

You can find more information about this film, and see a brief trailer, here at the IMDb site: Loving You.

Review copyright 2024 Sue's DVD Reviews

Dad's Army Series 1 and 2

(Amazon UK link)

As an older child and teenager I regularly watched ‘Dad’s Army’ on television. My father loved this series, and while I didn’t understand all of what was going on, there was sufficient to make me laugh now and again. Gradually the main characters began to feel familiar, and as a young adult I sometimes watched repeats on TV. So when the opportunity arose to buy some of the DVDs, many years ago, I went ahead and acquired some of them. 

They sat on our shelves for a long time, but finally, over the past couple of months, we have watched the DVD set entitled, slightly mystifyingly, ‘The Complete first series plus the ‘lost’ episodes of Series Two’. I know that three of the six Series Two episodes are missing, unlikely ever to be recovered. But the three which are in this set are surely the ‘found’ ones, rather than being lost. 

In any case, it’s probably forty years since I saw any of these, which are in black-and-white; from Series 3 onwards, they were filmed in colour. I did recall some of the first episode, when the platoon is formed, headed by Mr Mainwaring the bank manager (pronounced 'Mannering'). But it’s possible I was remembering the full-length feature film that was made later, as a lot of it seemed quite new to me. It’s possible that I had never seen these early episodes - or not for nearly sixty years.

The whole series is set in the second World War, when men unable to join up in the army formed their own defence groups locally. Some them start with real film from the era, cleverly edited with some of the characters from the series. The first ‘Dad’s Army’ episode was broadcast in 1968, and shows the first gathering of the unlikely troops. 

Captain Mainwaring (Arthur Lowe) is suitably pompous; his second-in-command, Sergeant Wilson (John le Mesurier) much more relaxed, unwilling to shout or give orders. Lance Corporal Jones (Clive Dunn) is the local butcher, and possibly the most enthusiastic of the new recruits. He fought in a previous war and considers himself an expert. 

Other characters who recur in the series are Private Wilson (James Beck) who works in the black market and tries to make money any way he can; Private Fraser (John Laurie) who is fiercely Scottish and works as an undertaker; Private Godfrey (Arnold Ridley) who is a retired tailor; Private Pike (Ian Lavender) who is 17 and works as a bank clerk. Pike’s mother regularly appears, worried about her son’s health; she is a widow, and it’s quickly clear that Sgt Wilson is romantically involved with her. 

The first few episodes include attempts to get hold of weapons and uniform. A few items are issued, and they try to commandeer items from local people or organisations, usually with amusing results. There are episodes where the platoon learn new skills, or go out on watch, usually at night. Inevitably things go wrong, or misunderstandings arise.

There are just six episodes in Series One, and three remaining from Series Two. The characters are established right from the start, and these early episodes form the basis of the future series, although each one is complete in itself.

‘Dad’s Army’ often appears quite basic, television-wise. Backgrounds are sometimes artificial, and props are not always realistic. But it doesn’t matter. This is classic material, well-choreographed humour, and a stalwart of British television. 

The whole series is a caricature of the reality of the 1940s Home Guard, and it was probably so popular in the 1960s because people watching could remember the war years clearly. Yet somehow there’s still an appeal, even to people considerably younger than we are. It's possibly worth seeing for the social history aspect, even if the real Home Guard were rather better organised and less prone to error. 

Definitely recommended if you don’t mind the very British ridiculousness of some of the situations.  There’s even an ‘extra’ feature on this DVD set, explaining the circumstances of the losing of Series Two, and the finding of three of the episodes. 

Review copyright 2024 Sue's DVD Reviews