Who do you think you are kidding Mr Hitler

If you think we’re on the run?

We are the boys who will stop your little game

We are the boys who will make you think again …

Can you see those animated arrow-headed nazi snakes poking their swastika heads through Europe towards Blighty? And the plucky little Union Jack arrow, poking them back again? Don’t panic! There’s a charming scene in Stephen Russell’s We’re Doomed! The Dad’s Army Story (BBC2). Roy Hudd playing Bud Flanagan sings the theme tune to Jimmy Perry (Paul Ritter). Sings it beautifully, straight through, records it in one take. It was, incidentally, the last thing Bud Flanagan recorded; he died not long after, in October 1968. Anyway, it brings a tear to Perry’s eye; his show has got its tune, all done now, good to go. Brings a tear to my eye, too, if I’m honest.



But that’s jumping the gun. Back to the beginning, March 1967, and Perry, a jobbing actor who is failing to get parts and going nowhere, has an idea for a sitcom, based on his experiences in the Home Guard during the war. He writes it, and shows it to BBC producer David Croft (Richard Dormer), also frustrated professionally, who likes it. Together, they rewrite and write more and turn it into … well, you know what it turns into.

This could have been unbearable. A BBC drama about a great BBC success story of the past; actors playing well-loved actors playing well-loved characters; a warm, sticky, luvvie daisy chain of self-congratulation, and up-its-own-arseness (“they DO like it up ’em!”). In fact, it’s very hard not to like, whether you are Dad’s Army’s biggest fan, and you get all the knowing nods and the winks (not just to DA but to future Perry-Croft collaboration Hi-de-Hi! too) or you’ve never seen a single episode. It is more than a Dad’s Army luv-in, it’s a portrait of a working partnership working very well; two men who weren’t having much fun at all suddenly having a lot of it, making something funny. Almost like a work romance. And it’s not just the creators having fun, the actors are, too, and a happy cast has happy results, apparently. Plus, it’s a nice portrait of the late 60s – big collars, little skirts, pretty girls, the Pretty Things, Herman’s Hermits, the Kinks, a Beetle, spelled like that, a red one.

As for the BBC, well she’s not a hero in this at all – more like the pantomime villain. If anything, We’re Doomed shines the spotlight on everything wrong – then and still – with Auntie, the layers of management and bureaucracy nonsense. So head of comedy Michael Mills (Harry Peacock) likes Perry and Croft’s sitcom, but then it has to go to head of light entertainment Tom Sloan (Stuart McQuarrie) and then above him there’s Head Of BBC1 Paul Fox (Keith Allen), a former para and a man of few words who doesn’t seem to like anything much at all. They have all got to have their say, and their input. There are so many compromises to be made, and egos to be kept happy, it’s a wonder that anything of any worth with any character or integrity came/comes out of the place at all.

It’s a relief that Michael Mills is a friend and a colleague’s dad (or was, he died in 1988) rather than either of the other two, which would have made discussing the show awkward. Mills – with his big battleship on his desk and his gruff “now look here”s – comes across as someone who makes things happen rather than someone who tries to stop things from happening. He didn’t just commission it, he came up with the name Dad’s Army too (clearly a better title than Perry’s The Fighting Tigers) and was instrumental in casting it.

They’ve done a pretty damn good job of that here, too, casting, casting the casting. John Sessions as Arthur Lowe as Mainwaring, Ralph Riach as John Laurie, Mark Heap as Clive Dunn, Julian Sands as John Le Mesurier … oh lordy gawd, this is turning into a luv-in too, a luv-in of a luv-in. But hey, it’s Christmas, and it is absolutely lovely. As are the closing credits. “You have been watching …” with them doing the swaying thing in the countryside with their guns and bayonets, and their not-guns and bayonets. We are, indeed, doomed.