The Army’s become a sitcom — but it’s no laughing matter
Since the dawn of sitcom, the Armed Forces have supplied rich pickings. Alfie Bass and Bernard Bresslaw sent up national Service in The Army Game, before the brave bumblers of Dad’s Army gave us the greatest TV comedy of all.
We’ve laughed ourselves silly behind the lines in it Ain’t Half Hot, Mum and in the trenches with Blackadder Goes Forth. The bomb disposal squad of Bluestone 42 delivered a modern classic set in Afghanistan.
Some savage wit needs to pen a fresh Services sitcom while we’ve still got soldiers. Army: Behind The New Frontlines (BBc2) makes it plain that the situation for our fighting men and women is bleakly farcical.
it’s a good job the British squaddies’ sense of humour is traditionally dark, because they need it more than ever now.
The cameras were invited to a meeting of the top brass, debating how to save £3.8million on manoeuvres in canada.
One senior fellow pointed out that two million quid could be slashed from the budget straight away if the troops didn’t fire any ammunition. This idea met with warm approval.
Another high-ranker proposed doing their sub-Arctic training in Kenya, where costs were lower. This was like watching an out-take from The Office, with David Brent and colleagues wearing camouflage jackets in the boardroom.
All the punchlines were delivered straight-faced. ‘The British Army is smaller than it has been since cromwell’s day,’ said General Sir nick carter, head of the Army.
We have barely 80,000 troops, a quarter of the number in the Sixties. never mind the Territorial Army — we’ll soon need to call on civil War re-enacters to bolster Britain’s defences.
in direct contrast to our crippling cuts, Russia spends a third of its national budget on defence. And it’s the Russians that our beleaguered units were training to oppose, in the event of a Moscow-backed invasion of the Baltic states.
We observed the faces of British officers as they watched video footage of Russian artillery. Scores of missiles corkscrewed out of mortars in a fireworks display of awesome power.
One or two men frowned and muttered understatements of concern: ‘it wouldn’t be much fun on the receiving end of that!’ They weren’t kidding — especially if our lads don’t have any bullets. Still, think of the financial savings.
The strength of this documentary is that nobody had to preach or rant. The cameras simply looked on. Sometimes it was dull, sometimes blood-curdling.
Man Down (c4), the sitcom starring and written by Greg Davies, is steeped in the history of TV comedy.
The trouble is, it tries to pay homage to every genre — and the result is a slapdash jumble that can’t decide where to earn its laughs.
Greg plays a useless slob of an ex-teacher called Dan, a 50-yearold who lives like a drunken student. it’s a tribute to The Young Ones: in the first series, Rik Mayall played his dad.
But some of the jokes belong in Terry And June. Surveying the residents of his mother’s retirement home, Dan sighed: ‘They all moan about Marks & Spencer, but they won’t buy their blouses anywhere else.’
Sometimes, Greg tries to ape Tony Hancock in his writing. One line, about having ‘callouses the size of marrowfat peas’, was a deliberate echo of Hancock’s classic complaint: ‘i’ve got toes like globe artichokes!’
Man Down needs to decide what sort of sitcom it really is. in fact, it needs to grow up a bit.
SINGER OF THE NIGHT: Angling to save money on a corporate event, the boys of The Apprentice (BBC1) strong-armed one of their number, a bearded twit called Harrison, to deputise. He thought he was Frank Sinatra . . . more like Frank Spencer.