Allo Allo - Series 1 And 2

Starring: Carmen Silvera, Gorden Kaye Director: David Croft, John B Hobbs, Martin Dennis, Mike Stephens, Robin Carr Original UK Premiere: 1982 Dvd Release: 19th August, 2002 Number Of Discs: 3 Format: Box set, PAL, Region 2 Encoding

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Allo Allo! was a British sitcom that ran on BBC1 from 1984 to 1992. It was created by David Croft, who also wrote the famous theme music & Jeremy Lloyd, who had written gags for Laugh-In in the 1970s; they were also responsible for the BBC series Are You Being Served. The shows premise was not to make fun of the war but to spoof war-based film & TV dramas & in particular a BBC1 drama about the resistance movement Secret Army, which ran from 1977 to 1979 & dealt with the activities of resistance workers based at a cafe in Brussels, though some inspiration was drawn from patriotic black-and-white British melodramas of the 1940s. Set during World War Two, Allo Allo told the story of Rene Artois, a French cafe owner in the village of Nouvion. The village had been occupied by the Germans, who had then stolen all the valuable artifacts in the town. These included the first cuckoo clock made & a painting of The Fallen Madonna by van Klomp. The commandant of the town decides to keep them for himself after the war & gets René to hide the painting in his cafe.

David Croft & Jeremy Lloyds sitcom Allo Allo started life in 1982 as a modest one-off spoof of the classic 1970s drama series Secret Army. A throwback to an earlier era during the 1980s heyday of alternative comedy, the shows decidedly un-PC mix of bedroom farce & crudely drawn national stereotypes was subsequently stretched over nine series in all , making it TVs successor to the long-running Carry On series. Allo Allo was not only similarly preoccupied with seaside postcard humour, it was also blessed with a cracking ensemble cast whose sheer energy eked out comic gold from even the laziest jokes about humourless Germans, cowardly Italians, Tally ho! Brits & onion-selling Frenchmen. Like Croft & Lloyds Are You Being Served, it was the cast interaction more than the material itself that produced the laughs.

Gordon Kaye deserves much of the credit for keeping the show fresh. Whether hes plotting with the sexy Resistance leader, in cahoots with the Nazi commandant about a priceless painting of The Fallen Madonna with the Big Boobies, or fending off the attentions of sex-starved waitresses under the withering gaze of his wife Edith, bumbling Rene is the lynchpin around which the endless farce revolves. Despite its determination never to vary the formula from week to week, the show had at least one virtue, it wasnt afraid to offend anyone.

Gorden Kaye is most famous in the UK for his work on television sitcom Allo Allo, where he played the character of Rene Artois. He has worked on television, radio, film & on the stage. The unusual spelling of the name Gorden is due to an Equity typing error. Gorden suffered serious head injuries in a car accident in 1990. Although he cannot remember any details of the incident, he still has a dent in his forehead from a piece of wood that smashed through the car window.

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