Ah! Bonsoir my little cabbages. Are you listening carefully? Good, because I shall write this only once… Allo Allo might be the best sitcom ever made

Just recently my wife and I were talking about Christmas gifts -Yes, it’s six months away, but we only just got married and we’re still at that “well, now what do we fill our brains with?” stage – and the eternal question came up:

Allo Allo is The perfect answer to “What do we buy dad?”

Dads are difficult creatures to buy for. Whisky. Clarkson books. That’s about the scope of most Dad-masses. Luckily my wife had an idea – something to watch. And from that conversation we remembered that ‘Allo ‘Allo existed. You don’t need to know that, but I’m trying to spin a yarn here.

One Amazon trip later and a box containing no less than 84 episodes (plus a bonus disc of Christmas specials) was crammed into my slot by the postman, – I’m ramping up the innuendo in this post slowly – and surprisingly, it just might be the greatest British sitcom ever made.

“‘Allo, ‘allo, zis is Night’awk, are you receiving me?”

Everyone born before 1987 will remember the series. A camp, goose-stepping assembly of odd catchphrases, saucy waitresses and paintings of breasts. End-of-the-pier humour at it’s lowest, surely?

It’s actually quite brilliant. The writing (by veteran Sitcom pairing Jeremy Lloyd and David Croft) is as tight as the seal on a suspiciously large sausage from the first episode. A simple, classic farce involving a plot to hide a missing painting, and return two dim-witted airmen to blighty that is extended remarkably successfully over no less than a decade.

Each character is played with a simple, but rather deft touch. Sam Kelly’s Captain Geering is a case in point. While not scripted, the actor uses the phrase ‘Tler!’ to respond to any superior officer’s salute. The actor felt that the character had no particular interest in the war effort and couldn’t be bothered to say all of ‘Heil Hitler’.

Another remarkable point is how well it has aged. Occasionally some of the jokes about Lt. Gruber’s fascination with René sway a bit close to the wind, but even this is done with remarkable deftness of tone.

When we think of early 80s comedy, and sitcoms in particular (the likes of The Young Ones notwithstanding), visions of Jim Davidson’s Jamaican accent tend to float nauseatingly into view. Here however, everyone is equal. Everyone – bar perhaps René – is a moron, but at least they’re on equal footing. With less sure hands at the helm it could easily slip into casual racism, but here it simply exists in a parallel universe where everyone is a endearingly dim.

When you narrow it down this is bizarre. It is after all, a sitcom featuring a member of the Gestapo as a leading character. While it wisely opens showing the German’s as buffoons, it also shows the Brits to be daft-as-a-brush tally-ho types without a clue (One episode requires British HQ to send fake German uniforms to the resistance. The Brits fly a Saville Row tailor over to do a fitting).

For the most part, the French are equally incompetent. The resistance girls are tough and organised, but every other Frenchman is ridiculous in the extreme. Madam Fanny screaming about Flashing Knobs, René’s wife and her dreams of singing stardom that force the café patrons to cram cheese into their ears, and Michelle, Evette and Mimi. Each of them rampantly attracted to our leading man, for reasons completely unknown. Although, given the strength of the competition in 40’s Nouvion, perhaps not so unknowable.

Capt. Hans Geering: Do you not see that if you kill him with the pill from the till by making with it the drug in the jug, then you need not light the candle with the handle on the gateau from the chateau!

René: Simple plans are always the best.

Ah yes, René François Artois. Watching with ever-growing incredulity as those around him concoct ever-more outrageous plans to further their own ends (both literal and figurative). It’s a joy to watch Gorden Kaye’s increasingly convoluted intros to each episode, usually ending with him telling us that he will be shot. Except in series one where he is shot, and replaced by himself, playing his own twin brother. For another nine seasons.

The plots may appear to be old-school music hall stuff, but they are as tightly entwined as anything that ever came out of Seinfeld. Multiple strands weaving together to form an impenetrable core of knob gags and slapstick that still manages to pay off with (in my case at least) genuine belly laughs every episode.

It’s worth dwelling on the writing. It may be Croft’s finest, no small feat when you consider his track record includes the much-loved Dad’s Army, and there’s a fine interplay between the two writers – whenever Edith finds René with his arms around one of the girls, one writer would prep the setup, the other would come up with the ridiculous explanation to get René out of trouble.

It’s a pleasure to see that other characters aren’t ignored either. While Crabtree and Michelle ‘of the resistance’ DuBois do have episodes where they are merely servicing their catchphrases, each appearance is tied directly to the plot and made to advance the action (although in Michelle’s case the advance sometimes comes as a Macguffin).

The entire thing has a wonderful staged feeling throughout, which reminds you that very few comic plays actually manage to keep up the laughs through one script, let alone across 84 of them.

Finally, it’s a little-known (or deliberately forgotten) fact that the series was based on the super grim n’ gritty 70’s show ‘Secret Army, where a brooding Bernard Hepton attempts to hustle for the resistance for very high stakes indeed (Hilary Minister, who played General von Klinkerhoffen, also appeared in Secret Army as the tyrannical Hauptmann Muller). As source material goes, it’s not worth the effort of digging out, but it does deserve this enduring lampoon.

What’s remarkable is that the central conceit continued to be effective throughout the 80s, a decade where comedy – including the mainstream – transformed beyond recognition. On other channels Britain was being introduced to the likes of Cheers, Roseanne and The Comic Strip, but over on the Beeb, this still continued to draw in millions each Saturday evening. Being popular isn’t everything of course, but rewatch it next to an 80s episode of Friday Night Live and see which looks the most outdated.

This may well be the most uncool thing ever published on Methods, but our tastes are nothing if not disparate, so I urge you to torrent, purchase or go and see your local am-dram’s version as soon as the opportunity presents itself, possibly after seeing it advertised as you pissed by a wondow. It’s a well-written, perfectly paced and plotted piece of British TV history that’s aged remarkably well, crammed to the rafters with daft dad jokes that deserve a second viewing.

Check out more in-depth and slightly wayward small-screen analysis in our Television section, including this interview with Those Three Girls.