'Allo, 'Allo: The British Are Coming
'Allo, 'Allo: The British Are Coming
BBC
30 December 1982
Historical Comedy
DVD
C-
This is from the makers of Are You Being Served?, but it's saddled with a not-as-bad-as-Hogan's-Heroes premise and subpar humour, not to mention a meh cast. In the early 1940s, a French cafe-owner is torn between the demands of not only his customers, his wife, and his two waitress-mistresses, but also the occupying German forces and the Resistance. But we get the same sort of jokes about sex and old age as on AYBS, except mostly not funny. I did like the gimmick that all the performers speak English, but they perceive each other as speaking their various native tongues.
A dark edge could've come from the contrast between farcical life and wartime threats of death, but there's one scene in this pilot (of a programme that would run off and on for a decade) that shatters any hope of that. A young Gestapo officer arrives and he's shown to be very observant (and leering). The two corrupt Germans who hang out at the cafe try to hide their valuable artworks, one simply flipping around a painting of a topless "Madonna," while the other puts a cuckoo clock down his trousers. The clock goes off at an inconvenient moment and, yes, the bird is at crotch-level. And the Gestapo officer doesn't even react! So suspense and characterisation are sacrificed for a predictable joke.
Still, yeah, at least now this project has touched the '80s.
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| Brits in disguise and riding on the wrong side of the road |
30 December 1982
Historical Comedy
DVD
C-
This is from the makers of Are You Being Served?, but it's saddled with a not-as-bad-as-Hogan's-Heroes premise and subpar humour, not to mention a meh cast. In the early 1940s, a French cafe-owner is torn between the demands of not only his customers, his wife, and his two waitress-mistresses, but also the occupying German forces and the Resistance. But we get the same sort of jokes about sex and old age as on AYBS, except mostly not funny. I did like the gimmick that all the performers speak English, but they perceive each other as speaking their various native tongues.
A dark edge could've come from the contrast between farcical life and wartime threats of death, but there's one scene in this pilot (of a programme that would run off and on for a decade) that shatters any hope of that. A young Gestapo officer arrives and he's shown to be very observant (and leering). The two corrupt Germans who hang out at the cafe try to hide their valuable artworks, one simply flipping around a painting of a topless "Madonna," while the other puts a cuckoo clock down his trousers. The clock goes off at an inconvenient moment and, yes, the bird is at crotch-level. And the Gestapo officer doesn't even react! So suspense and characterisation are sacrificed for a predictable joke.
Still, yeah, at least now this project has touched the '80s.
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