Dad's Army remake.

[anonymous-user]

Not sure about this one. The original cast defined the characters.
I guess the challenge will be bringing the characters to life without simply copying Lowe, Le Mesurier et al. Bill Nighy is in the frame as Sgt Wilson which makes sense, but if Russell Brand turns up as Pte Frazer it'll confirm my suspicions that this is going to be a bit ropey. Not sure who else is involved yet. Off the top of my head I reckon Simon Pegg could make a good Pte Pike.
Don't tell him your name Pike

[anonymous-user]

RichB said:

FourWheelDrift said:

I posted a made up cast list on page 1 as I was trying to think who they could possibly use. Those were the only elder statesmen actors old enough (discounting McKellern, Jacobi and Holm). If they want to make a film with the same characters as the originals then who else in their 70s+ is there?

Ironically most of the chaps in the Home Guard would have been in their later 40s and 50s

Robert Lindsay and James Bolam also spring to mind as good actors who can turn their hand also to sitcom, although neither of them have really done anything genuinely laugh out loud funny for a while.
I really do suspect they'll use the fresher so-called talent of the likes of Rob Brydon, Coogan, Armstrong and Millar, and the aforementioned James Corden. Jim Broadbent as the vicar?
Others.....Bill Bailey? Pegg and Frost plus the usual SOTD/Hot Fuzz auto-cast? The one character that I just cannot place is Cpl Jones. Clive Dunn made that role. That role was Clive Dunn.
Interesting that even the BBC admit the success of the original was down to the right script, with the right cast at just the right moment.....all three of which have now passed.

[anonymous-user]

LuS1fer said:

According to the BBC, Toby Jones is slated to be Mainwaring

And this is the thing.....they appear to be casting people to play the actors who played the original parts, not casting for the actual characters.

[anonymous-user]

Marty63 said:

Halmyre said:

Marty63 said:

GAjon said:

I don't think it should be re-made, to much quality in the original.

Why not a version set in the near future, the invading force being aliens, and the Walminton-on sea alien defence force led by Captain Pike played by Ian Lavender.

And the grandkids of the originals in place - good call.

Grandkids? Fraser and Godfrey were bachelors, Jones didn't get married until he was 70+, Walker 'went away', Mainwaring and his wife were childless, I think only Wilson and possibly Pike might have grandchildren.

you could sharp get around that

offspring from their anderson shelter romances

skeleton's coming out of cupboards

relatives kids

previous marriages

easy done

I still sounds st.

[anonymous-user]

Marty63 said:

Halmyre said:

Marty63 said:

Halmyre said:

Marty63 said:

GAjon said:

I don't think it should be re-made, to much quality in the original.

Why not a version set in the near future, the invading force being aliens, and the Walminton-on sea alien defence force led by Captain Pike played by Ian Lavender.

And the grandkids of the originals in place - good call.

Grandkids? Fraser and Godfrey were bachelors, Jones didn't get married until he was 70+, Walker 'went away', Mainwaring and his wife were childless, I think only Wilson and possibly Pike might have grandchildren.

you could sharp get around that

offspring from their anderson shelter romances

skeleton's coming out of cupboards

relatives kids

previous marriages

easy done

It's Dad's Army, not Jeremy bleedin' Kyle.

I know, i'm struggling

but it's gotta be better than remake with those suggested

what about if it was on ice or............

So if it's all about the illegitimate offspring shouldn't it be called Mum's Army?

[anonymous-user]

toppstuff said:

I have two minds about this.

I grew up with Dads Army. Still love it now.

But I was really moved by a documentary I saw about what the Home Reserve was really all about. This is a really important theme which was ignored in the BBC comedy series - the pathos of the reality they were facing.

It is easy to forget that everyone in the UK was pretty convinced that Germany would invade. The Wehrmacht had swept its way across Western Europe with ease. And we were next. Our fathers and mothers were gathered into town halls and they openly talked about guerrilla warfare. Postmen and car mechanics would leave their families and go to meetings where they would be taught how to slice someones throat open with a knife, how to create an I.E.D, how to kill people as efficiently as possible. And they all believed that they were really going to have to do it.

All this was ignored in the TV comedy. I'd like to see this dark side explored, personally.

It was a genuinely scary time.

That would be called Dad's Resistance Movement.
The genius of DA is that it does acknowledge and capture the sense of duty, bravery and willingness for sacrifice that the Home Guard displayed, but does it in a very subtle way.
The very fact that the platoon is made up of otherwise inactive personnel, but their main battles are with blinkered local authority in the form of Hodges is one example of this.

[anonymous-user]

Halmyre said:

More cast details on BBC:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-29536...

So they're doing precisely what we all excepted, and are casting actors to play actors playing a role.
Gonna be shoite.

[anonymous-user]

Further proof that they're not playing the characters, they're playing the actors who played the characters originally.

[anonymous-user]

Mutley said:

Crossflow Kid said:

Further proof that they're not playing the characters, they're playing the actors who played the characters originally.

Personally I would wait until i had seen the film before making such a bold statement.

Knowing how ingrained this is to the British conciousness, could the producers have thought that they should/could try to fill the roles with actors who have a resemblence to the originals?

And that's my point. Mainwaring is Arthur Lowe to most people so trying to make the new lead look like a dead ringer for him immediately makes me think they're simply trying to do a carbon copy on the assumption it was funny then so it must be funny now. And that never, ever works.
When, for example, Bond or Dr Who moves on, do they try to simply copy the old version, literally?
No, they recognise that the character(s) have to adapt to each actor's interpretation.
What's happening here is they're making a 2014 film about a 1960s/70s sitcom about the Home Guard of WW2.