Episode
Dad's Army: Absent Friends
Overview
On return from London, Mainwaring is shocked to find that almost all of the platoon are playing in a darts tournament against Hodges and the wardens, which they refuse to leave, despite losing. Wilson is displeased as Hodges has bought Mavis a drink and seems to be getting overly familiar with her. When a call comes through that a suspected IRA terrorist is in the area, however, the men pull together – eventually – and Wilson proves to Mavis and the others that he is the hero of the hour.
Details
- Series
- Dad's Army
- Season
- Season 4
- Episode
- Episode 6
- Air date
- 1970-10-30
- Runtime
- 30 min
Episode context
Absent Friends is Episode 6 in Series 4 of Dad's Army. It aired on 1970-10-30. The runtime is 30 min.
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Episode 5: Don't Fence Me In
The platoon is to guard a POW camp housing Italian soldiers and Mainwaring is suspicious because Walker seems rather too friendly with them. However, Walker explains that he uses them as cheap labour to mend radios and they go backwards and forwards in and out of the camp via a tunnel which they have dug beneath the stove. When an inspection is called for and only half the prisoners are available, Jones, doing the head count, makes them go round twice but the plan is rumbled when the missing half turns up.
Episode 7: Put That Light Out!
Mainwaring fears the Nazis may send spies across the Channel, so he orders the lighthouse manned by Jones, Pike, Godfrey and Frazer, who tells a terrifying story. The trio accidentally start the mechanism and are unable to shut it down, their attempts only make it worse until the mighty headlight points to town and the siren blows. On shore, the ARP goes berserk, especially when a Luftwaffe attack approaches, while Mainwaring, Wilson and Walker desperately try to find out how to get to their party without a boat or telephone line.
More episodes from this season
Episode 4: Sgt – Save My Boy!
The platoon are on night watch in a beach hut, waiting for Pike to bring their tea but Pike has got himself tangled up on barbed wire in the middle of a minefield. Waiting for an engineer to free him, Mainwaring and Frazer mount a rescue attempt of their own, beaten to it by Godfrey. Pike is freed and when the engineer turns up he tells everyone that Pike was never in danger because the minefield was some two hundred yards further along the beach – though Jones knows better!
Episode 8: The Two and a Half Feathers
Elderly ex-soldier Clarke joins the platoon and, by coincidence, it turns out that he and Jones were in the same regiment in 1890s Sudan. However, he paints a picture of a cowardly Jones who left him to his fate when he was captured by Dervishes, and soon after Jones receives two feathers, signifying cowardice, through the post.
Jones then tells his story where all the participants look like members of the present; he and Clarke were indeed captured but he rescued Clarke and kept quiet about his affair with the colonel's wife. Mainwaring is satisfied with Jones's account but before he can confront Clarke, Clarke departs.
Episode 3: Boots, Boots, Boots
Dissent in the ranks follows after a foot inspection as a result of which Mainwaring decides the platoon need their feet toughening up and proposes barefoot football as well as a 20-mile route march. To prevent the march, the men hatch a plan whereby they will go into the shoe shop from where Mainwaring has ordered his new boots and substitute a size smaller which will pinch his feet and put him off the idea of a long march. What they had failed to appreciate is that he already had a pair in his own size in for repair, which the shoemaker returns to him before the march.
Episode 9: Mum's Army
Mainwaring decides to enlist women to assist with the war effort. After initial interviews go rather less than satisfactory, Mrs Fiona Grey walks into his office and into his life. Mainwaring is flattered that not only do they share similar views regarding the war, but Fiona is also complementary about his persona. He finds himself falling in love. Unfortunately the men very quickly realise and start gossiping behind his back and Fiona decides to leave. Can Mainwaring get to the station in time to stop her?
Episode 2: Don't Forget the Diver
The platoon is to participate in an exercise to place a supposed bomb in a windmill occupied by the Eastgate men. It is decided that, as the mill is by water, Frazer, in an ancient diving suit left him by a friend who died of the Dreaded Bends, will push Jones, disguised as a log, up to the mill, where Jones will discharge the 'bomb' and, thanks to clever decoy plans used to fool Square, Jones successfully makes it, only to get caught up on the windmill's sails.
Episode 10: The Test
When the platoon is challenged to a cricket match by the ARP wardens, Mainwaring appoints himself captain and gives the standard inept lecture. They can only hope to make up, in effort, what they presumably lack in everything else, even uniform dress. Hodges, however, signs up as 'warden' — his secret weapon: star player Ernie C. Egan.
The vicar and his unsympathetic verger prove unexperienced umpires. Oblivious of most men's obvious physical limitations, Mainwaring's 'brave' approach runs into a record disaster score. However, when Ernie strains his arm, the wardens are a man down and the score starts equaling up.
Episode 1: The Big Parade
A parade is organised through Walmington-on-Sea to commemorate Spitfire Week and, after watching a newsreel, the platoon decide it would be splendid to have a mascot. Sponge farms sheep and the men try to catch his ram but it eludes them every time. Walker provides a goat, a skinny, pitiful creature which eats Mainwaring's £5 note.
Down a mascot, the platoon, Hodges and his wardens, the verger and his Sea Scouts, and the volunteer nurses all march faster and faster to be at the head of the procession until the parade becomes a marathon.
Episode 11: A. Wilson (Manager)?
Mainwaring is furious to learn that Wilson is leaving to become manager of the Eastgate branch, where HQ has also appointed him platoon commander with a promotion to Second Lieutenant. While everyone else is congratulatory, Mainwaring's jealous, socially inferior superior implies it's just the old boys network. He promotes Pike to chief clerk, and orders him to copy for all platoon members a promotion to sergeant, meant only for Jones, but so phrased each thinks to get three stripes, creating a Mexican army assembly.
Episode 12: Uninvited Guests
Once more, the civic vicar's hospitality for both Home Guard and ARP forces the rival corps' men to cohabit in the church. This time, Mainwaring and Hodges even have to share the vicar's desk at the same time. Their men try everything to push the others away, and end up lighting the chimney so ineptly that the church tower catches fire, making it a prime air raid target. As that would render them the laughingstock of the county, they decide to put out the fire on their own, with their usual mixture of bravery and utter bumbling incompetence.
Episode 13: Fallen Idol
The platoon gets its turn at weekend training, for a bomb course. Captain Square convinces Mainwaring that officers shouldn't sleep with the OR (other ranks) so he puts up blankets for him and Wilson, just after he forbade the others to voluntarily 'spoil him'. Next, Square insists a captain can't join his men for beer, rationed to two pints for safety, which the men, especially Frazer, take for disloyalty. In Officer's Mess, Mainwaring naively volunteers to be 'made a cardinal', a rather cruel drinking game.