Dad's Army connection

I loved this show but I do recall it got quite a mauling from the critics at the time. I remember one constant criticism was that it simply stole from 'Dad's army' and as any fellow fans of Ben Elton will know, he was a huge fan of 'Dad's Army' so when he denied any such connection, it was a little unconvincing. There are some strong parallels between the two, for example, PC Goody and Private Pike's naivety and childishness, Inspector Fowlers meetings descending into whimsy and distraction just like Captain Mainwarings church parades, and his uncouth nemesis in inspector Grim and Captain Mainwarings counterpart in ARP Warden hodges. But, so what? In my opinion it wore its influences on its sleeve and was no bad thing.

I think it also suffered from the awful BBC prime time comedy slot curse. Ok, so it was never going to be edgy or anarchic like 'the young ones' or 'blackadder' but it never tried to be. It was safe, but funny. And although it was never going to make the top ten funniest show on TV of all time, it did end far to early in my opinon. Just look at the shows we've had in a similar slot since then: 'mad about alice', 'my hero' and 'all about me'. All uninspired and deeply unfunny.

Inspector Fowler, shared Captain Mainwarings pomposity and stuffiness but, the big difference was, we got to see inspector Fowler trying to navigate his way through the modern poitically correct world which was where a lot of the comedy lay. The show was topical too and after a recent viewing of the episode "fly in the wall" I was amazed how much relevance that had now (a reality tv crew and everyone wanting and desperately trying to be famous).

I would love to see another christmas special of this made, just to see what happened to the gasforth police department and how they are coping with internet crime, assylum and terrorism issues.