User Reviews

Zoltan Korda's The Four Feathers is a film that means an awful lot to me, given that it was my late Dad's favourite film and we watched it together countless times. So I can't quite believe there is a Dad's Army episode that pays very strong homage to it and I didn't know about it. When I started this full rewatch of every Dad's Army episode, it was because, no matter how many episodes I watched during old BBC repeats, there always seemed to be more that I'd never encountered. Half way through series 4, I've seen many episodes that were entirely new to me but this one was the biggest surprise. While The Two and a Half Feathers isn't the most flat-out hilarious episode of the series, it is one of the most novel, using the arrival of one of Jones's old army buddies from his role in the Sudan as a spark for an ambitious flashback structure which mimics the epic filmmaking of Zoltan Korda (and even uses a couple of shots taken directly from the original film).

To counter accusations of cowardice that threaten his reputation, Jones recounts a tale from 1898 in which the members of his regiment are all depicted by cast members from the series. It's a nice idea that is sometimes a bit silly (Arthur Lowe's foul-mouthed commanding officer has his swearing blotted out by blown raspberries) but which gets by on sheer novelty. I must admit, cheap joke that it is, I laughed every time Jones referred to an "old Fakir". Woven around the flashback portion of the episode is the usual great character work that bolsters all the best Dad's Army episodes. It's moving to see how worried everyone is about Jones and how Mainwaring never loses faith in him, while Frazer has by this point before almost a full-blown villain, always deliriously happy to see his comrades undermined in some way and the first to leap on an opportunity to persecute them further. It's great to see Croft and Perry refusing to soften this character for the sake of sentimentality, as he rounds out the world of Dad's Army beautifully and the meaner he gets, the better John Laurie's performance becomes. But The Two and a Half Feathers really belongs to Clive Dunn, who relishes the opportunity to narrate a lengthy tale, and manages to portray Jones with a mixture of his usual bumbling malapropisms and a quiet, foundational dignity. He also gets to appear without layers of aging makeup for the first time.