A Comedy On This Day: Get Some In! (21 July 1977)

 The final episode of the fourth series, and the programme feels a bit routine in this episode. A military series will always be preoccupied with power and status, and the way that this one is plotted reminds me of the 'status games' scenes that we were made to improvise in youth theatres almost thirty years ago.

 C Flight have completed their nursing exams and Corporal Marsh has been found to have cheated and has his stripes removed, meaning that Richardson is now technically his superior. The 'erks' have fun ordering him around (most amusingly the do-gooder Lilley commanding him, "Come on! Move, move, you blinker!"). Naturally, this ascendancy is short lived as all five airmen are then posted abroad and the 'erks' attempt to flatter Marsh into swapping his posting with Leckie so that the four friends can stay together...

 Esmonde and Larbey were good enough writers that this never becomes tedious, but it certainly isn't surprising... Until the end, when there's a peculiar scene (shot on OB) of Corporal Marsh contemplating suicide by throwing himself off a bridge. That is unexpected, though it does seem rather unprecedented and out of character. But the moment is so rushed and quickly resolved that it doesn't leave much of an impression.

A Comedy On This Day: Get Some In! (11 May 1978)

 Although this late episode is only mildly funny, it’s still worth watching as a good example of Esmonde & Larbey's storytelling skills.

 Corporal Marsh is still enjoying his status as a modest military hero, believed to have carried his dying colleague through snowy wastes for two days. The episode starts with his telling the tale once again, this time to an adoring audience in a Church Hall. This heroic tale is undercut by flashbacks of his cowardice in action - with the snowy wilderness rather hopefully realised through a lot of polystyrene snow being thrown at Tony Selby in a little corner of the Teddington studio.

 The four young airmen are in the audience for this event, which is hosted by Lilley's Vicar father. Despairing at watching Marsh take everyone in, the milksop character of Lilly reasons that if you can't beat them join them, vowing to now follow Marsh's example. Sitcom audiences always appreciate an 'out of character' story, and derive some pleasure through watching this wet character indulge himself with drinking, leering and attempting some PG certificate swearing.

 The end of the episode is particularly interesting. Lilley's colleagues get fed up with Lilley as a bully and braggart, and send for his vicar father to come over and see him right again. Lilley comes into possession of an incriminating diary from the dead man in the snow, offering ample evidence of Marsh's lies and cowardice. The episode ends with Marsh pleading Lilley for a copy of the diary, and the Reverend Lilley handing it back to Marsh. The priest's reasoning is that, instead of shopping him, the best course of action is to leave the matter to Marsh's guilty conscience. Its a curiously unprescriptive and ambiguous ending which makes the viewer consider the morality of actions, and a moment that lends the preceding merriment considerable depth and thoughtfulness.

A Comedy On This Day: Get Some In! (6 April 1978)

 The first episode of the fifth and final series, and this programme is starting to show signs of exhaustion. This suffers from the laborious nature of many first episodes, taking a lot of time to set up a regular situation (the four National Servicemen are posted to the hospital of a new base - R.A.F. Druidswater - where they are appalled to discover that they are to minister to the invalided Corporal Marsh, who is now being hailed as a military hero).

 Having to cover a lot of ground to get to this point, the episode is probably more interesting dramatically than comically, with the young men reflecting on their peripatetic situation as they get quickly reposted from a cushy billet in Malta and the cunning Marsh explaining to his wife how they can best exploit his new status through a strategy of false modesty. The studio audience have enough invested in these characters emotionally to go along with this, although its noticeable that they respond best to the simplest pleasures that the story has to offer - the boys' appalled reactions to being faced by a stripper in a Maltese dive bar at the start and the reassuringly familiar sight of Marsh yet again shouting at them at the end.

 Marsh's arrival to a Guard of Honour at R.A.F. Druidswater (shot on O.B. on a horribly overcast day) is achieved with considerable visual flair, with the drill shown from below and at a tilted angle.