Dad's Army (TV Series) Time on My Hands (1972) User Reviews

A hilarious series finale.

[Sleepin_Dragon · 9/10 · 22 April 2018]

Thee wonderful series five ends in real style, Time on my Hands is a wonderful episode, it's a great plot, featuring some fantastic one liners and hilarious sequences.

It reminds me a little of the episode uninvited guests, with a funny rooftop sequence, but the sequences in this one are equally as hilarious. The one thing that always struck me about this one, was just how physically funny the great Clive Dunn was, it's his physical humour that makes the episode. Memorable also for Fraser's 'we're marooned,' comments, and the brilliant German made comments from young Mr Grace.

A classic. 9/10

Aside from one sour note, a classic

[phantom_tollbooth · 9/10 · 7 July 2023]

Time on my Hands is a fantastic end to series 5 of Dad's Army, only slightly tainted by a homophobic joke at the end. This is the sort of material you expect to find in 70s sitcoms but Dad's Army falls foul of it so rarely that it's surprising to see it in there and the fact that it is the closing gag of the episode unfortunately spotlights it to an extent that you can't really ignore it completely. Still, giving the joke to Hodges does at least suggest Croft and Perry knew it was obnoxious, although choosing to end on it also suggests they were under the misapprehension that it is funny.

Aside from that, Time on my Hands is classic Dad's Army, with a great plot about the platoon being interrupted in their morning preparations for work by the news that there is a German parachutist hanging from the town hall clock tower. While trying to rescue and apprehend the German, the platoon get trapped in the clock tower when Jones breaks the ladder. It's a great setup with shades of the classic Menace from the Deep, in which the Home Guard also ended up marooned in a perilous situation. Wonderful comedy beats abound, from big moments of slapstick as Jones is besieged by the ornamental figures that are inadvertently reactivated, to Pike throwing bottles at Hodges and Mainwaring approving, another riveting tale of terror from John Laurie's Fraser, and my favourite moment, the platoon trying to mime the word "swing" to the dangling German by performing a chorus of In the Mood.