Explore the ways in which Dad’s Army exploits its medium to create and circle humour
Explore the ways in which Dad’s Army exploits its medium to create and circle humour
Dad’s Army is a situation comedy set in a small, desolate town during the Second World War. Dad’s army is based on a unit of a home guard. The town is called Walmington-On-Sea. The show, directed by David Croft and Jimmy Perry, was broadcasted from 1908 to1977. It was shown weekly. The show is mainly about a platoon. This platoon consists of a group of men who set up a local defence unit. The platoon is lead by George Mainwaring.
Dads Army is an early sitcom. If we watch carefully we can see that it is rooted in many antecedent genres notably Theatre and Radio. Radio donates the voices and how they differ in different situations. These changes are usually the quickness, tone and volume. We can see this when Mainwaring emphasis what he says. He seems to speak like a machine gun firing. The words are fired out loud and quickly and sometimes letters are missed off outstandingly vowels and syllables. Theatre offer many different tricks used since before Shakespeare, which mainly are set pieces. Dads Army takes many different scenes from Shakespeare. A fine example of this is in a later episode of Dads Army. It was taken from Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night when Malvolio is being watched. Dad’s army replaces Malvolio with Mainwaring. We can also realise that the Platoon always mess the jobs they are given up. This adds to the comedy in a clownish sort of way. Maybe because we notice that Mainwaring is always trying to keep the military ethic, idea and dignity which is usually demolished because of his uniform being messed up. This clown acting is used in every episode of Dad’s Army. There are many examples of these, most of them being continual gags (happens in nearly episode) outstandingly Pike always getting wet and Mainwaring being ridiculed due to the state of his uniform.
