Allo Allo

Listen very carefully, I will say this only once!

THE ALLO ALLO COMPLETE SERIES BOX SET IS NOW AVAILABLE TO ORDER FROM AMAZON, CLICK HERE

Allo Allo was first broadcast on BBC1 in 1982 and went on to run for 10 years and Eighty Five episodes ending in 1992. All of which are now available in one superb "Complete Series Box Set".
Allo Allo was written and created by David Croft and Jeremy Lloyd who together wrote the first six series, series seven was written by Lloyd and Paul Adam.
David Croft was responsible for some of the UK's best loves situation comedies, his credits are quite incredible. Dads Army, It Ain't Half Hot Mum, Hi-de-Hi!, You Rang, M'Lord?, Are You Being Served? Come Back Mrs Noah, Oh Happy Band! Grace and Favour , Which Way to the War Here, Oh, Doctor Beeching!.
For his part Jeremy Lloyd has no less an impressive career history, and actor before he became a writer, Lloyd starred in Are you Being Served, A Hard Days Night with The Beatles, and innumerable other 60's and 70's British comedy films, he was briefly married to Joanna Lumley.

Allo Allo is set in the occupied portion of France during the second world war and tells the story of a French café owner, René Artois, who resides in the village of Nouvion. Rene wants but never achieves the quite life, caught between his various lady friends, his wife, his mother in law, the French resistance, the escaped British flyers the German Army, the Gestapo and the Italians he hasn't a moments peace.
One plot line is that the Germans who have occupied the village have also stolen the few valuable the village owns, most notably the first cuckoo clock ever made and a painting of The Fallen Madonna by the Dutch artist Van Klomp, more famously known as The Fallen Madonna with the Big Boobies by Van Klomp).

The competition, between various members of the German armed forces, to control and eventually steal these valuable pieces of art and the never ending machinations of the resistance combined with Rene's lust for and lusty waitresses, provide the basis for one of the funniest and most beloved shows of the past 20 years. Classic farce, slapstick and visual gags, ridiculous accents, plenty  of sexual innuendo and shameless cultural stereotyping. The show is offensive to every nation equally, Germans, French, Italian and not forgetting the British. Representing the four different languages (French, German, Italian and English) spoken by the characters, was a problem solved by using theatrical and absurd foreign accents. The premise that the English could not understand English spoken with a French accent led to many hilarious scenes. For example, an exchange between French-speaking characters, conducted in English with a French accent, is totally incomprehensible to the English airmen until Michelle switches to a 40's style "top hole, old chap" style banter in a Dame Anna Neagle upper-class English accent. And the entire comedy premise of the character of Crabtree the English undercover officer disguised as a French-speaking Gendarme, who speaks abominable French. His mangling of French vowels is represented by similarly distorted English, most famously his customary greeting catch phrase 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".

As well as the TV series, Allo Allo gave rise to a successful 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.

Produced and Directed by David Croft
Written by Jeremy Lloyd, David Croft, Paul Adam, John Chapman, Ian Davidson, Ronald Wolfe, Ronald Chesney

CAST
Gordon Kaye (as Rene Artois)
Carmen Silvera (as Edith Artois)
Kirsten Cooke (as Michelle DuBois)
Vicki Michelle (as Yvette Carte-Blanche)
Sue Hodge (as Mimi La Bonc)
Francesca Conshaw (as Maria Recamier)
Richard Marner (as Colonel von Strohm)
Arthur Bostrom (as Officer Crabtree)
Kenneth Connor (as Monsieur Alfonse)
Richard Gibson (as Herr Otto Flick)
Kim Hartman (as Private Helga Geerhart)
Sam Kelly (as Captain Hans Geering)
John Louis Mansi (as von Smallhausen)
Robin Parkinson (as Le Clerc)
Hilary Minister (as General Erich von Klinkerhoffen)
Guy Siner (as Lt. Hubert Gruber).

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