‘GORILLA WARFARE’ (TV)
Please feel free to comment on my review.
In this episode, the ‘Dad’s Army’ team go on a training exercise where Captain Mainwaring gets to be ‘the highly important secret agent’. They have many obstacles to overcome. These include nuns, Chief Warden Hodges and the Verger; and this escaped gorilla that seems to be chasing the platoon.
There are two nuns in this episode including Rachel Thomas as the Mother Superior and Sister Mary (yeah, I don’t know who plays her). It was amusing when the Mother Superior asked the ‘Dad’s Army’ team to help with their car. Mainwaring says “Take no notice” as he believes them to be spies.
This is a fairly amusing episode where the ‘Dad’s Army’ team are on the lookout for ‘counter-agents’ deterring them from their task in the exercise. I found it funny when Bill Pertwee as Hodges and Edward Sinclair as the Verger are trying to foil the ‘Dad’s Army’ team’s efforts for Captain Square. 😀
They always mess it up. When trying to direct a plane towards the ‘Dad’s Army’ team’s presence, Hodges gets drenched in yellow dye as a reward. Very soon, Hodges and the Verger come across the gorilla and are instantly terrified. But it’s not a real gorilla. It’s actually someone dressed up in a suit.
The gorilla himself is funny to watch. You can clearly see it’s a man in a suit and it’s really Robin Parkinson as Lt. Wood. I can’t understand why the ‘Dad’s Army’ team couldn’t see through that disguise. This is especially when they catch him at the end and he makes the error of revealing himself.
As the Colonel says, it’s a very hare-brained scheme to deter the ‘Dad’s Army’ team. Yes, Robert Raglan returns as the Colonel in this episode. There’s also Michael Sharvell-Martin as the Lieutenant who warns the ‘Dad’s Army’ team about the gorilla. There’s also Erik Chitty as Mr. Clerk in the story.
But it’s Arthur Lowe as Captain Mainwaring who steals the show in this episode. I love his reaction to Frazer telling him the story about ‘the old empty barn’. He later tells Wilson that he sometimes finds his men a ‘bunch of idiots’. It was funny when Mainwaring got seemingly drunk at the episode’s end.
‘Gorilla Warfare’ is a good ‘Dad’s Army’ episode to watch. It has a sunny atmosphere, especially when the ‘Dad’s Army’ team are out in the open air on location. The gorilla could have been more convincing to fool the ‘Dad’s Army’ team, but that’s the British Army for you. There was a war on. 😀
‘Gorilla Warfare’ (TV) rating – 7/10
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