Dad’s Army is set inWalmington-on-Sea, an imaginary south-coast town not far from Eastbourne, was the setting for the Second World War adventures of a disparate group of men who, prevented by age or some other disability from enlisting in the services, enrolled as Local Defence Volunteers (LDV), forming part of Britain’s ‘last line of defence’, a force which became known colloquially as ‘Dad’s Army’. Creator/writer Jimmy Perry had been in one such LDV group when he was 16 and based the idea upon his own experiences; it was his first sitcom. He and co-writer David Croft populated the show with a host of memorable characters, each with a recognisably different trait: the Captain, Mainwaring (pronounced Mannering), was pompous and suffered from delusions of grandeur that regularly led to his downfall; his Sergeant, Wilson, was vague and – to the perpetual annoyance of Mainwaring – cultured and public-school educated; Jones was dotty; Pike was precious; Walker was wily; Frazer was pessimistic; and Godfrey was frail. Often in opposition to them were the effete vicar, the oleaginous verger, the bullish ARP warden and the officious Colonel, Mainwaring’s rival from a nearby town. All of the men had day jobs: Mainwaring was the local bank manager, Wilson his chief clerk and Pike the clerk; Jones was the local butcher; Frazer was the undertaker. The comedy arose from the bickering interplay between all these characters and the sometimes desperate attempts to solve the unlikely problems encountered by the accident-prone but determined and well-meaning platoon.
A BBC Radio version of Dad’s Army, adapted from the TV scripts by Harold Snoad and Michael Knowles, ran for a total of 67 episodes

Arthur Lowe as Captain Mainwaring
John Le Mesurier as Sergeant Wilson
Clive Dunn as Lance Corporal Jones
John Laurie as Private Frazer
Arnold Ridley as Private Godfrey
Ian Lavender as Private Pike
James Beck as Private Walker
Graham Stark as Private Walker
Larry Martyn as Private Walker
Bill Pertwee as ARP Warden Hodges
Frank Williams as The Vicar
Edward Sinclair as The Verger
John Snagge as The Narrator