The sound of Who Do You Think You Are Kidding Mr Hitler? accompanying the pompous Captain Mainwaring and his men as they march haphazardly through English countryside has been familiar to British TV viewers for more than four decades.
But now, as Dad’s Army is remade for the big screen, Walmington-on-Sea’s hapless Home Guard platoon will have to grapple with a new and unsettling female presence among the troops – played by Catherine Zeta-Jones.
The Oscar-winning Welsh actor will play a glamorous journalist, Rose Winters, a new character who – according to the film’s newly released synopsis – will be writing about their exploits while also “setting pulses racing and putting the local women on red alert”.
Zeta-Jones will be joining a stellar cast of British actors for the film, with new additions to the cast including: Michael Gambon, who will play Godfrey; the Inbetweeners’ Blake Harrison as Frank Pike; and Danny Mays as Joe Walker.
Doctor Who writer and star of Sherlock Mark Gatiss will also be joining the cast, as will Sarah Lancashire and Alison Steadman.
Toby Jones, known for his acclaimed TV portrayal of Alfred Hitchcock, will take Arthur Lowe’s role as Mainwaring – famous for his putdown “You stupid boy!”. Bill Nighy will play his taciturn deputy, Sergeant Wilson. The announcement of Jones’s involvement quashed controversial rumours that Mainwaring would be played by a woman in the modern adaptation.
The film will be directed by Oliver Parker, whose previous credits include Johnny English Reborn and the 2007 remake of St Trinian’s. The script is by Hamish McColl, who wrote Johnny English Reborn and Mr Bean’s Holiday.
The second world war saga will be shot entirely on location in Bridlington on the Yorkshire coast, some distance from the original show’s fictional East Sussex location. It will be set in 1944, as the second world war is reaching its climax and the allies are poised to invade France.
The film adaptation will see the unlikely heroes of the Walmington-on-Sea Home Guard grapple with a German spy on the loose in their seaside town, in between competing for the affections of Zeta-Jones’s character.
The original Dad’s Army BBC show, which still remains one of Britain’s best-loved sitcoms, ran from 1968 to 1977, attracting 18 million viewers at its height.
A 1971 film spinoff had a screenplay written by the show’s original creators, Jimmy Perry and David Croft.
In an interview with the Guardian in September, Toby Jones said the remake, which begins filming next month, would be respectful of the beloved original series.
“I’m as big a fan of Dad’s Army as the next person,” he said. “We’re going to pay homage to the original and not make something that trashes the legacy. I know that [co-creator] Jimmy Perry is right behind it.”
Indeed, Perry, now 91, said he was keeping his creative distance from the new film.
“When I signed the contract to release the film rights, one provision was that I didn’t have to write anything, I didn’t have to do anything,” he said. “I’m letting them get on with it.”
