A Comedy On This Day: It Ain't Half Hot Mum - Gloria's Finest Hour (23 July 1981)

 For a programme into its eighth and final series, It Ain't Half Hot Mum was still in very good shape in 1981. We're up to 1945 and in Burma now, but the only historical note is when L.C. Reynolds admonishes Sergeant Williams, "Steady on, Sergeant Major. We've got a Labour government now. They make a fuss about all sorts of things, you know."

 Watching a popular regular acting highly out of character always makes for an interesting episode of a long-running sitcom, and this week Bombardier Beaumont suddenly becomes butch and courageous. This transformation comes from a bang on the head caused by a coconut falling from a tree. The filmed sequence of the hungry troops trying to get the coconuts down was what amused me most when I watched the original broadcast as an eight year old. These days I'm preoccupied with thinking, "Why don't you just try shaking the tree first?"

 There are three simultaneous sources of interest for a regular viewer in stories like this. How does this programme work when our expectations of a character are reversed? This new butch Beaumont really is horrible to his friends - "You poofs! Dressing up as tarts - You nasty little pervert, Sugden" - and you realise that it would be a grim concert party if he stayed like this. His effete qualities become particularly valued once they go missing.

 There's also a raised awareness of performance - how would Melvyn Hayes play a tough guy? As it turns out, rather like Victor Maddern. The surprise factor just about carries it off, but you can see why you wouldn't ever cast him as a brute.

 And the third source of interest is in how and when the situation is going to revert to normal. In this episode it comes right at the end when a badge for valour is pinned on the Bombardier and the prick makes him faint. After a few scenes of the order of things being disrupted, it makes for a happy ending for regular viewers, reminding them of things that they like about the programme's ensemble.

A Comedy On This Day: It Ain't Half Hot, Mum - The Inspector Calls (21 February 1974)

 Sergeant Major Williams gets another voice-over devious soliloquy in this episode, delivered in a quite alarming eyeball-swivelling, beads-of-sweat close-up.

 There's some (to my mind) unorthodox casting here, with a visiting General played by Jeffrey Segal (best remembered now as Arthur Perkins in Rentaghost). Good actor that he was, there must have been dozens of other performers who would have been more obvious choices to convey the authority and class background of such a high ranking officer. David Croft must have been pleased with the decision, anyway, as he went on to cast Segal as a Brigadier in Dad's Army.

A Comedy On This Day: It Ain't Half Hot Mum - A Star Is Born (24 January 1974)

 One of the two episodes that only survive as Australian off-air recordings, in all their fuzzy Channel 7-idented glory. There's an unfortunate 'Granada Plus' quality in trying to follow the story when you watch this, with scenes seemingly stopping a couple of lines early and starting a couple of lines late.

 Perry and Croft experiment with different dramatic devices by having Sergeant Major Williams articulate his unspoken thoughts in voice-over in one scene. It works rather well, making good use of the late Windsor Davies' ability to convey poorly disguised deviousness in his close-up facial expressions and Captain Ashwood's obviously-malleable twittiness.

 It's not a technique that they often used - There's a Dad's Army sequence where the platoon write to an MP, when as they write letters it's narrated in voice over. Fraser's bit is very similar, where his facial expression sells the scene of his deviousness and self-interest. And John Laurie had the sort of face to pull it off.

 I would imagine that it would have been played in from tape or pre-recorded earlier the same day. It's not that technically difficult to do; it would also help the actor if they could hear it as he was performing. The audience laugh at the right points so it must have been shown to them on the monitor or on set, I suspect live. Colin's Sandwich in the late eighties demonstrated the wonderful comic mileage that could be got from the technique.

A Comedy On This Day: Comedy Playhouse - It Ain't Half Hot, Mum (3 January 1974)

 Always the most problematic of the four Croft & Perry series, IAHHM has a less successful introductory episode than any of its stable mates. In half an hour it has to introduce three different sets of characters (the officers, the troupe and the Indians), show how the power dynamic within each group operates and how the three groups communicate with each other (or don't) and establish a less familiar historical and geographical setting. On top of this, unlike Dad's Army, it's introducing queer and BAME characters, which requires careful handling. And it has to be funny, too!

 The episode doesn't quite lead the viewer by the hand into the situation, but instead drops us into the action in a rather confusing way. Really, it would have been more sensible (if obvious) to make more of the newcomer as a viewpoint character, but his experience is rather sidelined. The most distinctive element at this early stage is Ranghi Ram, the servant who soliloquises his thoughts to the viewer a figure from a centuries-old theatrical tradition, and something that isn't attempted in the other Croft & Perry shows.