When an episode was shown to members of the public to gauge audience reaction prior to broadcast of the first series, the majority of the audience thought it was very poor. The production team put the report containing the negative comments at the bottom of David Croft's in-tray. He only saw it several months later, [12] after the series had been broadcast and received a positive response. [13] [14] Situation [ edit ] The platoon have been chosen to take part in a BBC Radio programme to be broadcast just prior to the King's Christmas message. Broadcast as part of Christmas Night with the Stars.

In 2000, the show was voted 13th in a British Film Institute poll of industry professionals of the 100 Greatest British Television Programmes. In 2004, championed by Phill Jupitus, it came fourth in the BBC poll to find Britain's Best Sitcom with 174,138 votes. [44] Legacy [ edit ] Statue of Captain Mainwaring, erected in Thetford in June 2010 Note: This was the very first colour episode of Dad's Army to air in colour, as the BBC One colour television service commenced transmission on Saturday 15 November 1969.

MacDonald, Deirdre (18 March 1972). "Arthur Lowe, cheerful on parade as Mr. Drake the eccentric sleuth". Radio Times . Retrieved 4 June 2006. Mainwaring teaches the men to use the public telephone system as emergency communication. Jones and Hodges attempt to phone general headquarters when a German aeroplane crashes in the reservoir. We expected the show to have limited appeal, to the age group that lived through the war and the Home Guard. We didn't expect what has happened – that children from the age of five upwards would enjoy it too. [50] Major Regan from area headquarters decides that Jones is too old to be in the Home Guard, and announces that unless Jones can complete the assault course in fifteen minutes, he will be removed from the platoon. The BBC released two "Best of" DVD sets in October 2001 and September 2002, but it was not until September 2004 that the full series began to be released, with the first series and the surviving episodes of the second series being released first, along with the documentary Missing Presumed Wiped. By November 2007, the entire series had been released on DVD, with the final edition featuring the specials "My Brother and I" and "The Battle of the Giants" along with various other appearances, including several "Christmas Night with the Stars" sketches and excerpts from the 1976 stage show. The DVDs also include short individual biographical documentaries about the characters and their actors called We Are the Boys. The Columbia film adaptation is separately available; as this is not a BBC production, it is not included in the box set.

a b c d e f g h i j Pertwee, Bill (2009). Dad's Army: The Making of a Television Legend. London: Conway. pp.181–182. ISBN 978-1-84486-105-7.

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Braxton, Mark (22 December 2015). "Dad's Army is comedy gold – but the BBC wasn't always so sure". Radio Times . Retrieved 12 July 2016. Mainwaring has the opportunity to promote someone to corporal. Rather than promote Jones, he tests who has the greatest potential by temporarily promoting Private Frazer to lance corporal. Frazer's increasingly dictatorial manner soon alienates the platoon. Braxton, Mark (3 October 2018). "Lost episodes of Dad's Army to be remade with a new cast". Radio Times . Retrieved 7 November 2018. Neither the cast nor Perry and Croft were happy with the result. Perry argued for changes to try to reproduce the style of the television series, but with mixed results. Elizabeth Mainwaring ( unseen character), Mainwaring's reclusive, paranoid and domineering wife who is never seen onscreen. (In the episode " A Soldier's Farewell" her "shape" is seen sleeping in the bunk above the captain while in their Anderson Shelter.) Her marriage with Mainwaring is not a happy one and Mainwaring does his best to avoid her at any opportunity. They have no children.