A Comedy On This Day: Dad's Army - Ring Dem Bells (5 September 1975)

 The first episode of the eighth series. If you've got a programme as well-established as Dad's Army was by 1975, with much loved regular characters, you only need to have one very good idea per episode. A premise that's original, can be easily described and creates an image in the mind will is probably be enough to carry your audience. "The platoon dress up as Germans" is just one such idea.

 Having dressed them up, the eventual plot that stems from this idea ends up as a bit of a runaround. Far funnier are the little character bits that arise from the change of costume - Pike dressed as a German officer playacting behind Mainwaring's desk when he's alone in the office, or Wilson's approval of the "awfully smart" Nazi uniform.

 The reason why they are dressed up as the enemy is because they're extras in a film. The 'Crown Films' people that the platoon deals with are the part of this story that most extends the Dad's Army world. Instead of glamorous characters, they turn out to be a pair of unpreposessing cockneys played by John Bardon and Hilda Fenemore, who often appeared as variations of these roles, and it's diverting to see a bit of London visit Walmington-on-Sea. Neither has very much distinctive to do, but costume woman Queenie's combined solicitousness (calling the soldiers 'dear' as she measures them up) and practicality rings true to me.

A Comedy On This Day: Man About The House - The Last Picture Show (4 September 1975)

 When I'm watching Man About The House I often find myself thinking that Robin is just the type of person who I'd really dislike. There's an unappealing cockiness, taking the form of being unwilling to take anything seriously and a lack of regard for anyone else. There's an odd sequence when Chrissy brings her new boyfriend Neil home and Robin immediately starts impersonating him and agreeing with him in a sarcastic way that the boyfriend doesn't register but Chrissy does. And it makes me think, 'But Chrissy is supposed to be your friend! She'd have good cause to be upset by your behaviour!'

 The bespectacled boyfriend is an interesting period character, a film buff of the 1970s and - as one of him female friends who bumps into him when he's on a date with Chrissy tells him that "you were on that panel at the BFI" - some type of film scholar, to boot. He turns out to be a film-obsessed monomaniac, assuming that Chrissy knows all about nitrate stock, Melies and Edwin S. Porter and will be happy to come the cinema society with him to see two hours of Eisenstein offcuts. His downfall comes when he gives Chrissy a birthday present that he would want himself, a cinecamera (Robin of course gives her nothing) and is honest about her filmmaking efforts.

 The boyfriend is supposed to be a crashing bore, but such care and detail has gone into making his film history talk authentic and accurate that I'm afraid that my ears pricked up with interest whenever he launched into his boring lectures. He is certainly inconsiderate towards Chrissy, but then so is Robin... The film buff material reaches a peak of interest when Neil takes Chrissy to a film history exhibition of stills from early silents at the NFT! The exhibition set is only a few pokey panels in the Teddington studio, but Production Designer Alex MacIntyre has gone to some effort to get the exhibits right... I like to think that Thames had these items in stock from some Arts programme.