Allo Allo

Listen very carefully, I will say this only once!

Allo Allo was broadcast by BBC1 from 1982 to 1992 and comprised of 85 episodes. 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 & Paul Adam. Croft and Lloyd were also responsible for the popular sitcom Are You Being Served?.

The series is set in occupied France during World War II, 'Allo 'Allo tells the story of René Artois, a French café owner in the village of Nouvion. Germans have occupied the village and stolen all of its valuable artifacts. These include the first cuckoo clock ever made and a painting of The Fallen Madonna by the Dutch artist Van Klomp, (known as The Fallen Madonna with the Big Boobies by Van Klomp).

The commandant of the town has decided to keep all the valuables for himself after the war and forces René to hide the painting in his café. Hitler also wants the painting for himself, and sends Herr Otto Flick of the Gestapo to the town to find it. Flick, in turn, conspires to keep it for himself. The paintings are duplicated by a forger, get mixed-up and put in knockwurst 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 downed British airmen. René is forced to work with the all-women Resistance, who would otherwise shoot him for serving Germans in his café. The far-fetched plans of the Resistance to get the airmen back to England, which almost always fail, are one of the main running gags of the series. As part of these plans, the Resistance have placed a radio under the besd in René's mother-in-law bedroom. The sign that a message is coming in involves flashing bed knobs, one can imagine the gags!

These few plot devices combined with Rene's lust for his waitresses, provide the basic storyline throughout the entire series, on which are hung classic farce, physical comedy and visual gags, ridiculously amusing fake accents, great dollops of sexual innuendo and broad cultural clichés which are offensive to just about every nation involved in the war, Germans, French, Italian and not forgetting the British. 

At the start of each subsequent episode, René would summarise the plot to date to the audience in a gag based on the "As you remember..." device commonly used in serials. Each episode builds on the previous ones, often requiring viewers to have seen the previous episode in order to fully understand the plot

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).