Allo Allo started out as a one off in 1982,but was well received enough by viewers, to become a regular BBC sitcom and ran for eight series, attracting 17 million viewers at its peak.
Allo Allo is a send up of the seventies BBC drama, Secret Army, where a cafe owner hid downed British airmen from the Nazis and took part in resistance activities. However, while Secret Army certainly wasn't a comedy, Allo Allo sent up Secret Army by replacing Albert, the resistance hero, with a cowardly, double dealing restaurant owner called Rene, played brilliantly by Gorden Kaye, who is a reluctant resistance member, hiding two idiotic RAF pilots from the Gestapo. Also while being a fairly useless member of the French Resistance, he is hiding two valuable paintings for the Nazis and hoping to cash in when the Nazis win the war and sell the paintings.
For all a few viewers complained to the BBC that Allo Allo was demeaning the brave work of the French resistance and portraying the Nazis, particularly Gestapo man Herr Flick, as incompetent buffoons rather than sadistic and evil, the whole point of David Croft's sitcom was to send up every wartime stereotype going. Hence the French were shown up as cowardly, devious and lusty, Germans as kinky, cruel( in a humorous way in Allo Allo) and insensitive, the British as upper class twits and Italians as lazy and untrustworthy.
Yet without a fantastic script by David Croft and an excellent cast, Allo Allo could have flopped, but went on to become the biggest sitcom of the mid eighties. Catchprhases such as " I shall this only once" in an exaggerated French accent, " you stupid woman" whenever Rene was caught by his wife with one of the waitresses, and Officer Crabtree's mangled attempts at speaking French, " I am a poloceman", entertained millions for years. Special mention has to be made of Richard Gibson's Herr Otto Flick, the Gestapo officer who was constantly being thwarted and coming off worse( in one case being blown up), Kirsten Cooke's hilarious French resistance leader Michelle, and Guy Siner as the gay Nazi, Gruber, who fancies Rene and pursues him throughout the series.
Sadly political correctness would probably stop a show like Allo Allo being made now, but repeats prove there is a healthy market for such a good sitcom that is still hilarious thirty years later.
Allo Allo is a send up of the seventies BBC drama, Secret Army, where a cafe owner hid downed British airmen from the Nazis and took part in resistance activities. However, while Secret Army certainly wasn't a comedy, Allo Allo sent up Secret Army by replacing Albert, the resistance hero, with a cowardly, double dealing restaurant owner called Rene, played brilliantly by Gorden Kaye, who is a reluctant resistance member, hiding two idiotic RAF pilots from the Gestapo. Also while being a fairly useless member of the French Resistance, he is hiding two valuable paintings for the Nazis and hoping to cash in when the Nazis win the war and sell the paintings.
For all a few viewers complained to the BBC that Allo Allo was demeaning the brave work of the French resistance and portraying the Nazis, particularly Gestapo man Herr Flick, as incompetent buffoons rather than sadistic and evil, the whole point of David Croft's sitcom was to send up every wartime stereotype going. Hence the French were shown up as cowardly, devious and lusty, Germans as kinky, cruel( in a humorous way in Allo Allo) and insensitive, the British as upper class twits and Italians as lazy and untrustworthy.
Yet without a fantastic script by David Croft and an excellent cast, Allo Allo could have flopped, but went on to become the biggest sitcom of the mid eighties. Catchprhases such as " I shall this only once" in an exaggerated French accent, " you stupid woman" whenever Rene was caught by his wife with one of the waitresses, and Officer Crabtree's mangled attempts at speaking French, " I am a poloceman", entertained millions for years. Special mention has to be made of Richard Gibson's Herr Otto Flick, the Gestapo officer who was constantly being thwarted and coming off worse( in one case being blown up), Kirsten Cooke's hilarious French resistance leader Michelle, and Guy Siner as the gay Nazi, Gruber, who fancies Rene and pursues him throughout the series.
Sadly political correctness would probably stop a show like Allo Allo being made now, but repeats prove there is a healthy market for such a good sitcom that is still hilarious thirty years later.