Hello everyone! 🙂
Welcome to ‘Bradley’s Basement’ blog and I’m Tim Bradley!
I didn’t think there would be more ‘Dad’s Army’ stuff for me to review on ‘Bradley’s Basement’, but sometimes these things happen when you least expect it. I’ve finished checking out the ‘Dad’s Army: The Missing Episodes’ DVD, featuring animations of lost ‘Dad’s Army’ episodes, mostly from Series 2.
I hope to revisit the DVD sometime in the future and do reviews on the latest animated episodes of ‘Dad’s Army’. This will probably mean having to revisit the radio versions of those ‘Dad’s Army’ episodes and revisit the 2019 remake of the missing Series 2 episodes. I’m looking forward to that. 🙂
There’s also the ‘Dad’s Army: The Radio Show’ audio release by Big Finish for me to check out. Hopefully, I’ll be checking that out soon with my revisit of ‘The Missing Episodes’ DVD. It’d be very fitting of me to revisit these brand-new ‘Dad’s Army’ items for my blog’s 10th anniversary in 2025. 🙂
As you’re probably aware, three episodes of ‘Dad’s Army’ are currently missing from Series 2, including ‘The Loneliness of the Long Distance Walker’, ‘A Stripe For Frazer’ and ‘Under Fire’. These episodes have been adapted in various forms since their initial TV transmission releases back in 1969.
In 2015, ‘A Stripe of Frazer’ was animated, based on the surviving TV soundtrack. At that time, ‘A Stripe of Frazer’ was the only missing episode to have its original TV soundtrack archived. The TV soundtracks for ‘The Loneliness of the Long Distance Walker’ and ‘Under Fire’ are still missing today.
This is a shame. So, how come there are animations of ‘The Loneliness of the Long Distance Walker’ and ‘Under Fire’ on DVD? Well, that’s because the animations are based on the radio adaptations for those episodes. That is, they’re mainly based on the radio episodes. This is where it gets a little confusing.
You see, the original radio episodes of ‘The Loneliness of the Long Distance Walker’ and ‘Under Fire’ didn’t have James Beck and Ian Lavender in them. Instead of James Beck, Graham Stark played Walker in ‘The Loneliness of the Long Distance Walker’. The animation episodes made up for that. 🙂
Sort-of. 😐 You see, for the animation episodes of ‘The Loneliness of the Long Distance Walker’ and ‘Under Fire’, Walker is voiced by David Benson instead of Graham Stark, as he sounds more like James Beck. There are scenes featuring Pike, where he’s voiced by Jack Lane instead of Ian Lavender.
I suppose Ian Lavender is much older than when he was a young lad to voice Pike again for the animation episodes. 😀 Incidentally, David Benson and Jack Lane are the two-men cast for the ‘Dad’s Army: The Radio Show’ audio release by Big Finish, which I’m really intrigued to listen to very soon. 🙂
As well as the three missing Series 2 episodes, there are also two mini-Christmas Specials that have been animated and they have their TV soundtracks intact. There’s ‘Poles Apart’ (originally called ‘Santa on Patrol’), which I didn’t know about beforehand and there’s ‘The Cornish Floral Dance’. 🙂
I’ve come across ‘The Cornish Floral Dance’ a few times when it was an audio recording only on the Christmas Specials DVD, the radio version of ‘The Godiva Affair’ and a recording of the ‘Dad’s Army’ stage show on CD. I’m looking forward to updating my review on ‘The Cornish Floral Dance’ based on the animation episode.
On the special features menu of ‘The Missing Episodes’ DVD, there’s a colour version of the Series 3 episode ‘Room at the Bottom’. Originally, this had been available in black-and-white on the Series 3 DVD. I’m pleased to have seen the colour version of ‘Room at the Bottom’ on DVD along with Ian Lavender introducing it.
The ‘Dad’s Army: The Missing Episodes’ DVD has been worthwhile. As a ‘Dad’s Army’ fan, I had to purchase the DVD to find out what the latest animation episodes were like. I’m also pleased that ‘A Stripe of Frazer’ now has its own DVD release, as it didn’t have that before when it came out in 2015.
Stay tuned for my revisit of the ‘Dad’s Army: The Missing Episodes’ DVD in the future! 🙂
Thanks for reading!
Bye for now!
Tim 🙂
Bradley's Basement 