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Dad's Army

Comedy series, broadcast from 1974-76.

These radio broadcasts were adapted by Harold Snoad and Michael Knowles from the original television scripts written by Jimmy Perry and David Croft; and they star Arthur Lowe, John Le Mesurier and Clive Dunn.

The show follows the humorous exploits of a Home Guard platoon on the south coast of England during the Second World War. Their commanding officer, Captain Mainwaring (played by Arthur Lowe), is also the local bank manager, and sees his unit of part-time soldiers as being in the front line following the fall of France. The platoon was formed to defend the town from German paratroopers, but never actually goes into action, despite Mainwaring's fervent desire to get to grips with Herr Hitler.

The original television series ran from 1968 until 1977. The radio adaptations (which, in the main, feature the original television cast) were broadcast between 1974 and 1976.

For radio, some additional dialogue was needed in order to fill-in for those parts of the script which had been presented visually on television. For instance, the television series often used visual gags, but for obvious reasons these would not have worked on radio.

Some re-casting for radio was unavoidable, as James Beck (who played Private Walker) died part-way through the making of the first radio series. Walker is thus played in some of the radio recordings by Graham Stark, and in later ones by Larry Martyn.

John Dyas, the producer of the radio show, re-cast some of the supporting characters for no particular reason. These include Mrs Pike (where Janet Davies was replaced by Pearl Hackney), Mrs Fox (Pamela Cundell was replaced by Mollie Sugden), and the Town Clerk (Eric Longworth was replaced by Julian Orchard).

This collection includes the radio episode entitled "The Recruit" (series 3 episode 18), which has been banned by the BBC over its supposedly controversial content.

The recordings are mainly from the radio series, but also included are the television soundtracks of some rarely-seen items connected with the show.

The files listed in the column VBR MP3 are not in fact variable bit rate files. This is a column for files which do not fall into any of the Archive's standard bitrate categories. Most of these on this page are 80 Kbps, at a sample rate of 48 kHz.


This audio is part of the collection: Old Time Radio

Keywords: Old Time Radio; OTR; Comedy; Dad's Army

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Reviewer: BigPeter - - December 2, 2008
Subject: Gems of Our Time
Well it was so great to download and play all these on my mp3 player. I, along with a lot of others were brought up with Dads Army and we remember the stars with fondness. Jones wanting to place objects up the unknown, pike who would be more at home in the mens department of a major store. Oh and all the others, such gems in a real world. Would have loved to have been a fly on the studio wall and seen the out takes, which would prob leave us all rolling in a fit of laughter.

Reviewer: briansrapier - - October 20, 2008
Subject: Unable to listen :(
Sadly, I have attempted numerous times to download both the entire archive and individual shows, but have been unable to listen. It appears there may be some sort of file corruption.

I would appreciate someone looking into this.

Reviewer: Rasclarke - - September 13, 2008
Subject: A Rave
This is radio production at its finest. Loveable characters, brisk, smooth stories always rich in laughs. I was weaned on the TV series, so this is bringing it all back.

Reviewer: Radiocaster - - September 5, 2008
Subject: British Homour at its Best
A WONDERFUL SERIES AND WITH SO MANY GOOD ACTORS IT REALLY DOES SURPASS A LOT OF STUFF YOU SEE AND HEAR NOW. I STRONGLY ADVISE MY AMERICAN COUSINS TOO TAKE A LISTEN AND IF THEY CAN A LOOK AT THIS BRITISH CLASSIC FROM THE BBC!!!

Reviewer: woofer3 - - April 10, 2008
Subject: as good as it gets.
excellent uploads, this really works well on the radio. I can listen to these timeless classics over and over again.