User Reviews

Still without any uniforms or weapons apart from a solitary rifle borrowed from Private Godfrey, the men are carrying out training which involves Private Pike getting soaked and his mum not being happy about it.

When the head of the Peabody Museum of Historical Army Weapons rings the bank to suspend his account for the duration of the war, Captain Mainwaring has the idea of requisitioning the weapons contained in the museum.

The curator turns out to be Corporal Jones 88 year old father who puts up a stern resistance as the Home Guard try to break in. He even gets into an altercation with Jones, his own son.

Private Frazer uses a cunning trick to smoke him out, a bottle of whiskey.

A nice amusing episode, especially as Jones sr is rather crafty and having fun with it.

The LDV, or what we'd know more so as The Home Guard are desperate for weapons, with the army not forthcoming, Captain Mainwaring decides to requisition antique weapons from Peabody's Museum, but it's guarded by a hostile force.

More the kind of episode we'd get in future years, with the team haphazardly trying to carry out a mission.

George Jones is a great character, Corporal Jones's dad is hilarious as the curator, the way in which he defends the museum is very funny. I can't believe the difference in Pike, he's quite sensible here, and eloquent, how long before he'd become the stupid boy?

Peabody's Museum sadly doesn't hold many rewards.

Enjoyed. 8/10

Episode 2 of Dad's Army continues the good work of Episode 1 and expands on it. WIth the unit established they go looking to commandeer weapons, any weapons, and end up at the local military museum. Hilarity ensues as the curator won't let them in and they try to force their way in.

DAD'S ARMY - SERIES 1

MUSEUM PIECE - EPISODE 2

After a fantastic first episode, Museum Piece is a dip in quality but it does immediately broaden the scope of the series to show the different kinds of comedy it would attempt across its run. In this case, we get a slapstick-heavy episode about the platoon trying to commandeer weapons from the local history museum. Dad's Army's hit rate with slapstick varied, with some excellent examples mingling with some utterly dreadful ones. Museum Piece leans more towards the latter, with some very silly stuff about trying to gain entry to the museum by force when the caretaker refuses to let them in. A scene where they try and use a battering ram, only for the caretaker to open both the front and back doors so that they run right through the building, just doesn't work. This is an ancient gag generally seen in the fast paced world of cartoons, but staged with a group of older men there just isn't the kinetic momentum to carry it off. Some of the non-slapstick humour falls flat here too. The idea that the caretaker is Corporal Jones's father is particularly confounding, since I always thought the joke with Jones was that his age was indeterminate-ancient. The gag here is the idea of such an elderly man still having a living father, but we're told he is 88, which immediately gives us some idea that Jones must be in his early 70s at the very most. It's a point of pernickety preference but it really didn't work for me.

This episode is an example of a series still finding its feet. There are several points of interest in this regard, such as a surprisingly more openly hostile Wilson, a fleeting mention of the ill-fated Bracewell, despite his character being deleted after episode one, and the first instance of Mainwaring ending up with cockeyed glasses, a punctuating button which often characterised Dad's Army's better attempts at slapstick. Museum Piece isn't a complete dead loss either. There are a few funny moments, including Mainwaring pretending to be German bomber and some nice farcical concepts involving a scout and a milkman. The script builds to a big finish which probably worked better on paper than its anticlimactic execution allowed for. There's a sense that the ambition of the concept has been scuppered by the limitations of the budget. A failure then, but a passably charming one.