| 'Allo 'Allo! | |
|---|---|
'Allo 'Allo! intertitle of 'Puddings Can Go Off' |
|
| Format | Sitcom |
| Created by | Jeremy Lloyd and David Croft |
| Written by | Jeremy Lloyd David Croft (1982-1989) Paul Adam (1991-1992) |
| Directed by | David Croft Robin Carr Martin Dennis Susan Belbin Richard Boden Mike Stephens Sue Longstaff John B. Hobbs |
| Starring | Gorden Kaye Carmen Silvera Guy Siner Kim Hartman Richard Marner Sam Kelly Vicki Michelle Kirsten Cooke Francesca Gonshaw Kenneth Connor Sue Hodge Richard Gibson John Louis Mansi Rose Hill Arthur Bostrom Jack Haig Hilary Minster David Janson |
| Country of origin | United Kingdom |
| Language(s) | English |
| No. of series | 9 |
| No. of episodes | 85 (List of episodes) |
| Production | |
| Producer(s) | David Croft Mike Stephens John B. Hobbs |
| Running time | 26x25mins, 55x30mins 1x35mins, 3x45mins |
| Broadcast | |
| Original channel | BBC1 |
| Original run | 30 December 1982 – 14 December 1992 |
'Allo 'Allo! is a British sitcom broadcast on BBC One from 1982 to 1992 comprising eighty-five episodes. The story is set up in a small town café in Nazi-occupied France during the World War II. It is a parody of another BBC programme, the wartime drama Secret Army. 'Allo, 'Allo! was created by David Croft, who also wrote the theme music, and Jeremy Lloyd. Lloyd and Croft wrote the first 6 series. Series 7 onward was written by Lloyd and Paul Adam. In 2004, 'Allo 'Allo came 13th in Britain's Best Sitcom. A reunion special, comprising new material, archive clips and specially recorded interviews, was broadcast on 28 April 2007 on BBC Two.[1]
Contents |
Set during World War II, 'Allo 'Allo! tells the story of René Artois, a French café owner in the town of Nouvion (the town square was based on a courtyard at Lynford Hall, Norfolk where the pilot episode was shot).[2] Germans have occupied the town and stolen all of its valuable artefacts. These include the first cuckoo clock ever made and a painting of The Fallen Madonna by Van Klomp (known to those who have seen it as The Fallen Madonna with the Big Boobies). The local commandant, Colonel Kurt Von Strohm, has decided to keep them for himself after the war and forces René to hide the painting in his café. Hitler also wants the painting, and sends Herr Otto Flick of the Gestapo to the town to find it. Flick, in turn, conspires to keep it. The paintings are duplicated by a forger, get mixed up and put in knackwurst sausages. One is sent to Hitler on an ammunition train, which gets blown up, one is hidden, and the other is eaten for dinner by Flick himself.
At the same time, the café is being used as a safe house for two brave but clueless British airmen, Fairfax and Carstairs. René is forced to work with the Resistance, lead by Michelle Dubois, who threaten to shoot him for serving Germans in his café. The far-fetched plans of the Resistance to get the airmen back to England repeatedly fail. These are some of the main running gags of the series. As part of these plans, the Resistance have placed a radio in the bedroom of René's mother-in-law, Madame Fanny La Fan, as this is the only room nobody goes into unless they have to. This secret communication device between London and the resistance (codename "Nighthawk") is hidden under the bed, and incoming messages are signalled by triggering the light bulbs concealed in the bed-knobs, leading the elderly mother-in-law to cry "Ze flashing knobs!" René answers with "'Allo, 'allo, zis is Night'awk, are you receiving me?", hence the title of the show ("allô" is the normal French way of greeting someone over a remote communication system).[3] The Resistance are also assisted by Officer Crabtree, a British spy posing as a policeman sent to France because he can speak French. However, he does not speak it well, resulting in constant mistranslations. For example, whenever he says "Good morning", it comes out as "Good moaning".
René is also trying to keep his affairs with his waitresses secret from his wife, Edith (who regularly sings in the café, despite being an appallingly bad singer, which she does not realise). In addition, the Communist Resistance are plotting against René for serving Germans and working with the Gaullist Resistance. Ironically, the Communist Resistance only blow things up for money. The only reason that they do not shoot René is that their leader is in love with him, a fact he has to hide from both his wife and his waitresses, Yvette Carte-Blanche, Maria Recamier (Series 1-3) and Mimi Labonq (Series 4 onwards). Furthermore, the seemingly gay German Lieutenant Gruber is also continually flirting with René. These situations are made even more humorous by the fact that René is not exactly the best-looking man in France, is hardly a hero, and is often forced by his wife to do missions and secret operations. One memorable situation was when Edith pointed a gun at René to stop him from running away to hide with his cousin (when interrupted by the Colonel and his assistant Captain Hans Geering, he said that his wife was proposing to him).
René's death at the hands of a German firing squad was faked in an early episode, and throughout most of the show's run, he has to pose as his twin brother, and to convince his wife to marry him again in order to regain ownership of his café. In the meantime, René's wife is wooed by Monsieur Alfonse, the town undertaker, who is torn between his love for her and his admiration for René, whom he considers to be a true hero of France.
These few plot devices provide the basic storyline throughout the entire series, on which are hung classic farce set-ups, physical comedy and visual gags, amusingly ridiculous fake accents, a large amount of sexual innuendo, and a fast-paced running string of broad cultural clichés. Each episode builds on the previous ones, often requiring one to have seen the previous episode in order to fully understand the plot. At the start of each subsequent episode, René summarised the plot to date to the audience in a gag based on the "As you remember..." device commonly used in serials. In re-runs, local TV stations have shuffled the episodes, making the plot synopses useful. A recurring theme within individual episodes is that of independent plots aiming for a common objective ending up cancelling out each other's effectiveness.
The characters in the series are fairly one-dimensional, as most have a catchphrase, gimmick, or saying which became easily recognisable throughout the series.
The late Lord Bath was a big fan of 'Allo 'Allo! and in 1992, created a BBC exhibition in his ancestral home Longleat. In return the BBC made a copy of the painting of the Fallen Madonna, which may still be seen today.
With four different languages (French, German, Italian, and English) spoken by the characters, representing this to the audience could have been tricky. The programme uses the device of representing each language with English spoken in a theatrical foreign accent.
For example, an exchange between French-speaking characters, conducted in English with a French accent, is totally incomprehensible to the English airmen until Michelle (the only French character who speaks English) switches to Bertie Wooster-esque "top hole, old chap" style banter in an upper-class English accent. The English undercover officer Crabtree, in the permanent disguise of a French-speaking gendarme, speaks abominable French. His mangling of French vowels is represented by similarly distorted English, most famously his customary greeting catchphrase of "good moaning"; many of his distortions come out as innuendoes, such as "I was pissing by the door, and I thought I would drip in". The Germans, generally, speak English in a more guttural way than the French. Bertorelli, the Italian captain, speaks English in a nasal tone, generally adding an "-a" at the end of certain words; for instance in his catchphrase, "What a mistake-a to make-a!". Other examples included "We drop-a the bolls", "I kiss-a your hand-a". Curiously, in spite of the difficulties in communicating with the English characters, the French, Germans, and Italians all appear to understand each other's languages perfectly, the implication apparently being that they all share a common language (probably French or German) which they use when talking to one another, but one in which their own accents remain evident.
When one particular plan calls for Herr Flick and Von Smallhausen to impersonate English Airmen, a phonographic record is used by these German characters to learn the 'nuances' of English. This essentially consists of the non-word sounds approximating "Faffah, fah-fah fah-fah faah. Faffah, fah-fah fah-fah faah..." suitably voiced with the signature 'upper-class English accent' employed in the programme. Within the scope of the on-screen action, it is a surprisingly effective masquerade.
In one episode, René is actually forced to speak German (not to be confused with an earlier episode in which he infiltrates the Gestapo headquarters). He achieves this by simply speaking as he normally would, but noticeably more high-pitched, which may be a gag concerning the way the Germans talk (like the French but at a lower pitch).
The last few series introduced a new gag, where Colonel Von Strohm and Lieutenant Gruber are put in situations where they have to speak in a strange manner. In one episode, the two try to learn Spanish, which is basically "German" with high-pitched voices and mangled consonants. In another, they are forced to wear "suicide teeth" – large bulky dentures containing poison - making them garble their speech to avoid releasing the poison. In yet another episode, Von Strohm and Gruber are posing as Frenchmen, and are forced to speak French. This comes out as another set of non-words sounding like "Woffel woffel, woffel woffel". Another episode features a Swedish art dealer inspecting The Fallen Madonna, who pronounces "Heil Hitler!" as "Oil Jesus!"
After the Pilot aired in December 1982, a full-length first series of seven episodes was subsequently commissioned and aired from September 1984 onwards. Series two, three and four followed annually, comprising six episodes each.
Series five was commissioned with a view to syndicating the show in America.[5] As a result, it aired as a single long series of twenty-six episodes between September 1988 and February 1989. The attempts to air the show in America failed (although the series later became popular on PBS), and so series six had only eight episodes commissioned, which aired from September 1989 onwards.
On 25 January 1990, Gorden Kaye suffered serious head injuries in a car crash brought on by gale-force winds.[5] This delayed the start of the seventh series, which consisted of ten episodes airing from January 1991 onwards. Series 8 (7 episodes) followed in January 1992, and the ninth and final series of six episodes aired later that year from September onwards.
Two Christmas specials were also made. The first was a 45-minute episode, which followed Series 2 in 1985, and the second was also a 45-minute episode, screened at Christmas 1991, preceding Series 8.
In 1994, two years after the series ended, the BBC broadcast The Best of 'Allo 'Allo!, a compilation of clips from the series, linked by new scenes featuring Gorden Kaye and Carmen Silvera, in which René and Edith reminisce about the events of the war.
On 22 March 2007, a one-off special episode entitled The Return of 'Allo 'Allo! was filmed in Manchester, and was broadcast on 28 April 2007 at 9 pm on BBC 2. The storyline involves René writing his memoirs after the war, and the events from the final episode in 1992 have been overlooked. The new scenes were interspersed with clips from the original series and new interviews. The actors who reprised their roles were: Gorden Kaye, Vicki Michelle, Sue Hodge, Kirsten Cooke, Arthur Bostrom, Guy Siner, Robin Parkinson, John D. Collins and Nicholas Frankau. Jeremy Lloyd wrote the new material.[1][6]
Also in this reunion show, the BBC revealed that a German cable company had approached them with a view to showing 'Allo 'Allo! in Germany. This was the first time that the series was to have been screened there, largely due to German law regarding Nazi symbolism (salutes, swastikas, "Heil Hitler" greetings etc.). On 8 March 2008 the BBC announced that German channel ProSiebenSat1 had bought the screening rights for all eight series, which are to be overdubbed into German.
In France, the series was broadcast from 3 July 1989, dubbed into French, in the lunchtime free-to-air window of the pay-TV channel Canal+.
In Britain, BBC1 still repeats the series, but as a 'schedule filler' on Sunday afternoons. However episodes are run in an apparently random order which can be confusing due to the serial nature of the programme.
At the end of the each show, the end credits begin with a short vignette shot of each of the main characters with the actor's name displayed below. The shots are not actual clips from the episode but are usually re-enactments of a specific shot or action for each character from that episode. Being an ensemble show, the actor credits are given in the order of their first spoken line for that particular episode. Because every episode begins with René recapping the plot to camera thus far, Gorden Kaye is always first (even if he is not the first seen on screen, such as the start of episode 26 "The Sausages in the Trousers" where Mimi and Edith are first seen, but René has the first line). Gorden Kaye was credited first in all but one of the episodes, where he was credited second behind Carmen Silvera.
The show's premise was not to make fun of the war but to spoof war-based film and TV dramas, and in particular a BBC1 drama Secret Army, which ran from 1977 to 1979 and dealt with the activities of Belgian "escape line" workers who returned crashed allied pilots to Britain, based at a café in Brussels. Many of the elements and characters of Secret Army are directly mirrored and even some of the actors reappear in 'Allo 'Allo! These are Richard Marner, Guy Siner, John D. Collins, Hilary Minster and David Beckett. Some inspiration was also drawn from patriotic black-and-white British melodramas of the 1940s.
The French village setting is reminiscent of 1972's Clochemerle whilst Rene's intermediary role between the Germans and the Resistance reflects a comic version of Rick from Casablanca (as well as directly matching the proprietor of the café in Secret Army).
Two of the BBC's earlier wartime-based comedies - Dad's Army and It Ain't Half Hot Mum - were also written by David Croft in partnership with Jimmy Perry. Several actors from 'Allo 'Allo! also appeared in these series: Carmen Silvera, Rose Hill, Jack Haig, Joy Allen, Michael Stainton, Robert Aldous, John Leeson, John D. Collins and Robin Parkinson in Dad's Army, and Robin Parkinson, Gorden Kaye, John D. Collins, Iain Rattray and Eric Dodson in It Ain't Half Hot Mum.
The Shelburne Escape and Evasion Line (Operation Bonaparte) of World War II has some similarities to this series. More than 300 airmen and agents escaped through this line.
Due to the nature of having a café cabaret in the plot, music was often performed on the show. This usually took place with Madame Edith singing, and either Lt. Gruber or LeClerc at the piano. Occasionally, Gruber sang and played the piano at the same time. Characters could also be seen whistling or humming tunes at certain points in the plot.
David Croft and Roy Moore composed the show's theme tune. It is performed at the start and end of each episode, and features a French-style melody performed on an accordion. The title of the theme tune is London Calling; but according to Guy Siner who plays Gruber, the first lyrics are:
'Allo 'Allo, we meet again,
And just as before...
Then, we hear the rest of the lyrics as a part of a cabaret in episode 3 of the first series:
We loved, we parted as fate had arranged;
Now there you stand and nothing has changed.
And so it goes, the same refrain, the final encore,
You are my love, my only love,
Once more!
The café cabaret music usually took the form of 1930s film and show tunes - reminiscent of the way period songs were also used in Secret Army.
Most popular was "Louise", from the film Innocents in Paris (1953); which featured a number of times, and was even sung in the "broken-French" language of the character Crabtree. Gruber sang a number such as "Can't Help Lovin' Dat Man" from Show Boat or "(I Got a Woman Crazy for Me) She's Funny That Way" by Neil Monet and Richard A. Whiting. He gazed at René in a slightly lustful manner; replacing lyrics such as "woman" and "she" with "boy" and "he". He caused a particular sensation with his absolutely straight version of Nöel Coward's "Mad About the Boy".
Naturally, the "La Marseillaise" and the German National Anthem "Deutschlandlied" featured from time to time. This was involved in one gag where several French peasants sang La Marsellaise to celebrate the expected bombing of the Germans, but the singers flawlessly and without hesitation switched to Das Lied der Deutschen when Germans came nearby. Helga also sometimes stripped to a rather raunchy version of the latter tune.
Captain Bertorelli could be seen singing "'O Sole Mio (It's Now or Never)"; and the British airmen in a prisoner of war camp could be seen singing "Hitler Has Only Got One Ball".
In 1986, Gorden Kaye and Vicki Michelle released a version of the hit song Je t′aime... moi non plus. The characters of Yvette and René could be heard embracing each other, whilst the familiar musical Je t′aime melody played in the background. The song got to number fifty-seven in the UK Singles Chart.[7]
See the Café René Music webpage for more information on the music used in 'Allo 'Allo!
As well as the long running TV series, the show gave rise to a successful touring stage-show featuring most of the TV cast. The stage show ran from 1986 to 1992, including three London stage runs as well as international tours.
In January 1990, Gorden Kaye suffered serious head injuries in a car accident. As a result his understudy, John Larson, played the part in a London Palladium production. Kaye still has a dent in his forehead from a piece of wood that smashed through the car window. Gorden initially wanted to end the television show after his accident, but was convinced by Jeremy Lloyd to continue in his role as René.[8] In Australia, Gorden Kaye's part was played by Australian comedian/impressionist Max Gillies (later, Gorden Kaye repaid the favour when he took over Max Gillies' role in another play in Australia, when Max Gillies was not able to take part).
The show was last performed for a summer season at Bournemouth's Pier Theatre in 1996.
In 2007 Gorden Kaye, Sue Hodge and Guy Siner reprised their respective roles in a production of the stage show in Brisbane, Australia. They were joined by well-known Australian actors Katy Manning as Yvette, Steven Tandy as Colonel Von Strohm and Jason Gann as Herr Flick.[9]
In 2009, a new touring show, based on the 1992 tour written by Croft and Perry, opened at the Gordon Craig Theatre in Stevenage, Hertfordshire on 29 August 2008 before going on a national tour.[10] Vicki Michelle is reprising her role as Yvette Carte-Blanche. The Cast also included Jeffrey Holland playing Rene Artois and his Wife Judy Buxton playing Michelle. Other cast members included Robin Sebastian as Gruber, James Rossman as Herr Flick, Nell Jerram as Private Helga Geerhart and Claire Andreadis as Mimi Labonq
The theatrical version has also been released for amateur theatre companies in the UK and elsewhere.
In Australia, Roadshow Entertainment, under licence from the BBC began releasing the series on DVD in 2006, on a semi-annual basis. To date, all series have been released on DVD with only "The Return of 'Allo 'Allo!" TV special remaining.
| DVD name | Release date | Comments |
|---|---|---|
| 'Allo 'Allo! - Series 1 & 2 | 7 June 2006 | 3 disc set |
| 'Allo 'Allo! - Series 3 & 4 | 7 September 2006 | 3 disc set, includes Christmas special 1 |
| 'Allo 'Allo! - Series 5 | 9 February 2007 | 4 disc set |
| 'Allo 'Allo! - Series 6 | 7 November 2007 | 2 disc set |
| 'Allo 'Allo! - Series 7 | 2 April 2008 | 2 disc set |
| 'Allo 'Allo! - Series 8 | 6 August 2008 | 2 disc set, includes Christmas special 2 |
| 'Allo 'Allo! - Series 9 | 5 March 2009 | 2 disc set, includes The Best of 'Allo 'Allo! |
| 'Allo 'Allo! - The Complete Collection | 6 August 2009 | 18 disc box set |
| 'Allo 'Allo! - Series 1 - 4 | 5 August 2010 | 6 disc set |
Universal Playback, under licence from the BBC, began releasing the series on DVD in 2002. In the UK, six box sets with series 1–9 have been released. A complete box set has also been released
The UK releases have episode titles superimposed over the openings of the episodes (series 1-4). The American releases, on the other hand, have no on-screen episode titles, which is the way the shows were originally transmitted.
| DVD name | Release date |
|---|---|
| 'Allo 'Allo! - Series 1 & 2 | 8 August 2002 |
| 'Allo 'Allo! - Series 3 & 4 | 16 February 2004 |
| 'Allo 'Allo! - Series 5 Volume 1 | 23 October 2006 |
| 'Allo 'Allo! - Series 5 Volume 2 | 26 December 2006 |
| 'Allo 'Allo! - Series 6 & 7 | 18 August 2008 |
| 'Allo 'Allo! - Series 8 & 9 | 26 December 2008 |
| 'Allo 'Allo! - The Complete Collection | 2 November 2009 |
In January 2004, BBC Worldwide began releasing the show themselves onto DVD in North America, beginning with Series 1. The releases have continued on a somewhat irregular basis (approximately twice-yearly).
| DVD Name | Release dates |
|---|---|
| 'Allo 'Allo!: The Complete Series One | 2004-01-20 (2 discs) |
| 'Allo 'Allo!: The Complete Series Two | 2005-03-15 (2 discs; includes Christmas special 1) |
| 'Allo 'Allo!: The Complete Series Three | 2005-08-16 (2 discs) |
| 'Allo 'Allo!: The Complete Series Four | 2006-01-24 |
| 'Allo 'Allo!: The Complete Series Five Part Un | 2006-07-25 (2 discs) |
| 'Allo 'Allo!: The Complete Series Five Part Deux | 2006-07-25 (2 discs) |
| 'Allo 'Allo!: The Complete Series Six | 2007-01-16 (2 discs) |
| 'Allo 'Allo!: The Complete Series Seven | 2008-01-15 (2 discs) |
| 'Allo 'Allo!: The Complete Series Eight | 2008-05-06 (2 discs; includes Christmas special 2) |
| 'Allo 'Allo!: The Complete Series Nine | 2008-10-07 (2 discs; includes the Best of) |
| 'Allo 'Allo!: The Best of (1994) | 2008-10-07 |
| 'Allo 'Allo!: The Return of (2007) | TBA |
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