Hi, I don't know if this has been discussed; apologies if done, but just wondering why we watch Dad's Army.
Personally, I use it as a means of stress relief!! I can stick a DVD on and I'm laughing, even though I know what's going to happen!
Is this wrong for someone in their 20's? Who started watching DA when they were about 14?
I have been interested in WWII from about 1990 when I took part in a school project, I then had a book on WWII which my parents christened as; My Bible!!
I then saw an episode and asked,What it was? Think I was told it was about the Home Guard. Which sparked my curiosity..
Needless to say I rather liked Dad's Army there more I saw it!!!
Fundy
Good stuff Calum. Nothing to be ashamed of!
I started watching DA when it was on back in the mid 80's. Think it was on Saturdays back then and I watched them and found them pretty funny. They were then repeated in the mid 90's and that's when I started watching lots of them.
In early 00's I bought a few on video (ones I hadn't seen) and slowly started collecting the whole series.
Reason I watch DA?
1 - They're funny - some of the lines are just priceless (my mothers in a better place now. Angmering)
2 - They're quaint - a small coastal resort with all the different characters that bring the place to life.
3 - The realness - you could sort of imagine it happening in a town somewhere on the southcoast in wartime.
4 - It's all light hearted - Nothing really nasty and dark. Most of the time I find swearing really puts me off of a comedy show, so it's nice that DA doesn't resort to that.
5 - The characters - not one dull or out of place character.
6 - Excellent scripts
7 - Excellent actors
8 - Feels British to the core, and they make a joke of it too!
Fundy
billc
I started watching it when it first appeared, my Dad was in the TA's, watched it with him, thinking that was the sort of thing they got up to. Even joined for real for 12 years, wasnt the same as the prog
Ed
Have watched it since 1969
Dad's Army was one of many comedy series aimed at a family audience that just happened to be on tv in 1969, when I was growing up.
In those days there were only two tv channels (neither we nor anyone I knew had BBC 2 yet), so our whole family - including my parents and my sister - watched just about every comedy or light entertainment show that was on BBC 1 or ITV.
Dad's Army quickly became like the Morecambe and Wise Show: something that everyone in the country watched. In those days of the two channels it was actually very difficult to miss anything!
Dad's Army was a funny show, so I liked it. It had the advantage of being on BBC, so there were no commercial breaks, which helped the show to flow better than some popular shows on ITV (such as On The Buses), which got broken up by commercials.
Hard to say now just how I originally felt about the show at the age of 9! But it still makes me laugh today.
Bramleyman
Good clean comedy and with a Great cast to match.
jives11
I agree with everything else that has been said, but in addition I like it because I think it helped younger audiences to appreciate what the war was like for small towns and villages, in a way that was perhaps easier to believe than a serious drama.
I'm not saying it's necessarily 100% accurate, but I think a lot of Grandparents and their grandchildren would watch and talk about how things were, and the programme would catalyse this. My Grandfather was in the RAF Regiment and said that he thought Dad's Army was pretty accurate. He especially liked "We Know our Onions" as he said the Smith Gun had such a slow muzzle velocity, a good cricket fielder could probably fire it then run along and catch the shell
