Dad's Army: The Movie (1971), review "One round each, sir," comes the reply. What's great about the punchline is that it doesn't diminish the defiant little speech that precedes it. And that's what was great about Dad's Army, on both big screen and small: it was consistently funny, but underlying the humour there was always an irresistible warmth and humanity. Dad's Army: the Movie tells the backstory to the TV series, tracing how those two pensive figures on the hillside and the rest of Walmington-on-Sea's Home Guard platoon turn themselves into, if not exactly a crack fighting unit, then a resourceful and courageous band of brothers, who heroically save the day when, in the film's dramatic climax, a trio of enemy airmen drop in on their sleepy village. COMEDY SPECIAL: Tommy Cooper's 25 best jokes The film was made between the third and fourth TV series, by which time Dad's Army was established as Britain's best-loved sitcom, a position it retains to this day, almost 40 years on from the end of its original nine-year run. Its 80 episodes have been repeated constantly. The vital ingredients of the TV shows are all present and correct in the film, including the writers, Jimmy Perry and David Croft, and the core cast members - Arthur Lowe as Mainwaring, the bank manager, John Le Mesurier as his assistant, Wilson, Clive Dunn as Jones the butcher, Arnold Ridley as the elderly Godfrey, James Beck as wideboy Walker, John Laurie as Fraser the undertaker, and Ian Lavender as mummy's boy Pike. The only noticeable cast change is the substitution of Janet Davies for Liz Fraser as Pike's mother (and Sgt Wilson's secret lady friend) because the director, Norman Cohen, wanted someone sexier in the role. The main distinguishing feature of the film is its extensive use of outdoor locations: very few scenes are set in the church hall that was the focus of the TV series. Instead, we see Mainwaring and his men tramping the picturesque streets of Walmington and boldly venturing out on manoeuvres in the rolling fields of Kent. And, with more time to play with, Perry and Croft are much more generous with the period detail, bolstering the film's authenticity with glimpses of Walker's spivery (knicker elastic a speciality) and Jonesy's habit of discreetly slipping favoured customers a pound of highly prized sausages. In the opening scene, a Nazi general across the Channel in France watches through binoculars as Godfrey stumbles out of a gents" lavatory atop the white cliffs. "How can those stupid British ever hope to win?" he sneers. Dad's Army: the Movie, a delightful, heartwarming blend of history and humour, shows precisely how.