DAD'S ARMY - SERIES 3
MAN HUNT - EPISODE 12
Following two of the best episodes of the series in a row (Menace from the Deep and Branded) comes the inevitable comedown with Man Hunt. This misjudged, unfunny episode is not just my least favourite of series 3 but my least favourite of the whole show thus far. A directive to report all enemy parachutes that are discovered leads Walker to admit he found one a few weeks before but had it made into several pairs of lady's knickers. In order to discern if it was an allied or enemy parachute, Mainwaring, Wilson and Walker must visit the women who bought the undergarments to see if any of them will let them check the colour of the material. Dad's Army has generally aged quite well because it didn't dabble much in the sleaze and smut that was the stock in trade of so many of its contemporaries. Even this premise is only mildly saucy but the execution is embarrassingly off. It involves characters behaving in ways that no human being would, such as knocking on doors and bluntly telling women they want to see their underwear, without any context. Of course, this results in comic rebukes and slammed doors, but in one egregious case Walker's comment to a man about his wife having "some of my underwear" results in some horrendous domestic abuse comedy, as we hear the screams of a woman being beaten by her jealous husband. While this is undoubtedly the low-point of Man Hunt, the subsequent feeble storyline of a lethargic sniffer dog and the reused idea of a man with a foreign accent mistaken for a German spy do little to lift the quality, culminating in a terrible final joke that fails to even get a laugh from the audience. A low point.