Dad's Army (TV Series) We Know Our Onions (1973) User Reviews

Such a funny episode.

[Sleepin_Dragon · 9/10 · 3 January 2021]

Captain Ramsey has set some tough challenges for The Platoon, all the while Mr Hodges is desperate to receive a delivery of onions from Walker.

I absolutely love this episode, it is hilarious. If there is someone that you could have picked to be an Officer, someone that had all of the right elements, it was Fulton McKay, and he is terrific throughout this, that voice is perfect.

Lots of jokes throughout, I love the double of Hodges and The Verger, so funny, but what had happened to The Vicar, he seems to be in fewer episodes.

Classic scene where the tea lady enters the training room.

Classic, 9/10.

Fresh and Original

[nemo-27062 · 8/10 · 8 March 2022]

This episode takes place at a special training camp for the platoon and therefore introduces to some new characters as well.

The episode is wonderfully structured, with great twists and a lovely overall tone, the performance of Fulton McKay as Captain Ramsey is the highlight of the programme.

Criticize our leaders!

[tfevans · 7/10 · 9 December 2023]

The platoon are sent on a Home Guard training and assessment exercise with Captain Ramsey, who seems about as mad as the eccentric end of Mainwaring's troops.

Every attempt to use their initiative seems at odds with Ramsey's view of the correct solution to the tests.

The reaction of Frazer to Mainwaring's involvement the leadership test is the highlight of the episode, but the realisation when Ramsey leaves the pub at midnight is also a brilliant moment of comedy.

The ending is perhaps a little unconvincing - the tendentious Ramsey being unlikely to be quite so swayed round by the platoon's final bit of initiative. Nevertheless there is some good comedy here.

A series starting to lose steam

[phantom_tollbooth · 5/10 · 16 July 2023]

After kicking off with the classic The Deadly Attachment, series 6 of Dad's Army suffered a dip into a strange tone. The writing and performances of the three subsequent episodes have seemed slightly off, like the cast's hearts aren't quite fully in it anymore. Perhaps this is due to the ageing process, although The Deadly Attachment seems like proof that a great script could still bring out the best in the evermore elderly cast members. To be fair, the recording of We Know Our Onions was disrupted by a technician's strike, meaning almost the whole thing was filmed on location rather than studio sets in front of a live audience. Though location shooting was not rare on Dad's Army, in this case the lack of an audience to play to seems to have had a strange effect on the performances. Prominent guest star Fulton MacKay is the saving grace here, with a slightly more militaristic version of the type of performance he would soon give in Porridge. But the efficiency tests he oversees generally culminate in predictable, repetitive gags and the ongoing peripheral story about a van full of onions, though it ultimately proves vital to the story, for the most part just provides a flimsy pretext to shoehorn Hodges and the Verger into a story in which they would otherwise play no part. There's enough here to keep Dad's Army fans like myself vaguely amused for half an hour, but the overall impression here is of a series starting to lose steam.