Or "Au Revoir, Au Revoir"
Yes it's goodbye to a classic, as half the cast, including some of the main roles, Rene, Edith etc have passed away, there won't be any sequels, well not with them in it anyway.
Gorden Kaye as Rene, Carmen Silvera as his wife Edith, Vicki Michelle as Yvette, Francesca Gonshaw as Maria, Kirsten Cooke as Michelle, Jack Haig as LeClerc and Rose Hill as Madame Fanny on the French side, with Richard Marner as Colonel Von Strohm, Sam Kelly as Captain Geering, Hilary Minster as General Klinkerhoffen, Richard Gibson as Herr Flick, Kim Hartman as Helga and Guy Siner as Lt Gruber as the Germans and John Collins and Nicholas Frankau as the two British Airmen. All were great and the comedy from them was flowing. The separate scenes of Helga and Herr Flick, Colonel Von Strohm/Captain Geering were also excellent.
The big joke (at least one of them) running through this series was that most of the women and the gay tank commander all fancied Rene, the big, ugly and fat cafe owner, also the problems with the languages/accents, this is what cemented the comedy, but the dialogue also threw up lots of comedy and funny sexual innuendo, and it all worked, at least for the first 3 series.
The first to pass away was Jack Haig, whilst the show was still in production in 1989, then after - Hilary Minster in 1999, Carmen Silvera (2002), Rose Hill (2003), Richard Marner (2004), Sam Kelly (2014) and Gorden Kaye (2017) have passed away since.
You may have noticed I have called it a classic, however my rating of 7 denotes I am not completely happy with it, this is because it started to suffer in the later series, in fact as far as I am concerned, only the first 3 series are of the best quality, after that various actors leaving and new ones coming in did not help. When Francesca Gonshaw and Sam Kelly left (at the end of series 3/start of series 4) it started going downhill, and the new characters coming in did not help much. Arthur Bostrom as Officer Crabtree was ok to some extent, Kenneth Connor (excellent comedy actor) as Monsieur Alfonse was OK, but John Louis Mansi as Von Smallhausen and Gavin Richards as the Italian Captain Bertorelli were not and the character of Mimi Labonq by Sue Hodge was awful, also the screenplays started to run out of ideas and suffered to some extent in later episodes.
It was still funny up to the end but less so in the last episodes, Rose Hill and Richard Gibson also dropped out later on, and it showed, if you watched any episode from the first series then one from the last immediately after, you may have wondered what the hell happened in between!
But it was excellent in the first few years, so always worth watching a repeat on TV, particularly for Carmen Silvera who's acting was the best as Madame Edith, the put upon wife of Rene who did an excellent job at putting herself down with the bad singing (she could sing fine for real, as could her mother played by Rose Hill who was a former Opera singer), making herself out to be a bit stupid and her innocent character traits.
For the first 3 series I would have given it a 9.5, but the last few were much poorer, that's why I gave it a 7 rating.
Yes it's goodbye to a classic, as half the cast, including some of the main roles, Rene, Edith etc have passed away, there won't be any sequels, well not with them in it anyway.
Gorden Kaye as Rene, Carmen Silvera as his wife Edith, Vicki Michelle as Yvette, Francesca Gonshaw as Maria, Kirsten Cooke as Michelle, Jack Haig as LeClerc and Rose Hill as Madame Fanny on the French side, with Richard Marner as Colonel Von Strohm, Sam Kelly as Captain Geering, Hilary Minster as General Klinkerhoffen, Richard Gibson as Herr Flick, Kim Hartman as Helga and Guy Siner as Lt Gruber as the Germans and John Collins and Nicholas Frankau as the two British Airmen. All were great and the comedy from them was flowing. The separate scenes of Helga and Herr Flick, Colonel Von Strohm/Captain Geering were also excellent.
The big joke (at least one of them) running through this series was that most of the women and the gay tank commander all fancied Rene, the big, ugly and fat cafe owner, also the problems with the languages/accents, this is what cemented the comedy, but the dialogue also threw up lots of comedy and funny sexual innuendo, and it all worked, at least for the first 3 series.
The first to pass away was Jack Haig, whilst the show was still in production in 1989, then after - Hilary Minster in 1999, Carmen Silvera (2002), Rose Hill (2003), Richard Marner (2004), Sam Kelly (2014) and Gorden Kaye (2017) have passed away since.
You may have noticed I have called it a classic, however my rating of 7 denotes I am not completely happy with it, this is because it started to suffer in the later series, in fact as far as I am concerned, only the first 3 series are of the best quality, after that various actors leaving and new ones coming in did not help. When Francesca Gonshaw and Sam Kelly left (at the end of series 3/start of series 4) it started going downhill, and the new characters coming in did not help much. Arthur Bostrom as Officer Crabtree was ok to some extent, Kenneth Connor (excellent comedy actor) as Monsieur Alfonse was OK, but John Louis Mansi as Von Smallhausen and Gavin Richards as the Italian Captain Bertorelli were not and the character of Mimi Labonq by Sue Hodge was awful, also the screenplays started to run out of ideas and suffered to some extent in later episodes.
It was still funny up to the end but less so in the last episodes, Rose Hill and Richard Gibson also dropped out later on, and it showed, if you watched any episode from the first series then one from the last immediately after, you may have wondered what the hell happened in between!
But it was excellent in the first few years, so always worth watching a repeat on TV, particularly for Carmen Silvera who's acting was the best as Madame Edith, the put upon wife of Rene who did an excellent job at putting herself down with the bad singing (she could sing fine for real, as could her mother played by Rose Hill who was a former Opera singer), making herself out to be a bit stupid and her innocent character traits.
For the first 3 series I would have given it a 9.5, but the last few were much poorer, that's why I gave it a 7 rating.