by Sarah
30. septembre 2011 08:56
David Croft, one of the writers of the classic series Dad's Army died this week.
The Home Guard was formed in 1940 as the Local Defence Volunteers, an auxiliary part-time force equipped with Crimean-era cavalry carbines, pitchforks and canisters of pepper, and run by lots of ancient army officers who would appear on parade in full regimental kit, clanking with medals they’d won in the trenches, the Sudan and at Mafeking.
Clearly, it was a subject awaiting comic treatment. Yet in 1968, when Jimmy Perry and David Croft approached the BBC with a pilot script that was originally called The Fighting Tigers, the corporation was genuinely fearful of poking fun at veteran soldiers and “re-opening relatively recently healed wounds”.
Yet the writers knew what they were doing. Jimmy Perry had served in the Home Guard as a teenager – hence the character of Ian Lavender’s mollycoddled Pike – and rose to the rank of sergeant. David Croft, who died this week, fought in North Africa and was a major by the age of 23. Having overcome theBBC reticence, the series they devised was, by 1972, being watched by 16 million viewers every week.
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