The Army Game
Debuting on ITV in 1957, The Army Game was British
comedy at its best, very much in the style of Carry On
films which were to start the following year (Indeed some of the Army
Game cast developed into Carry On regulars).
 William Hartnell (who in time became the first Doctor Who)
was the appropriately named Sergeant-Major Bullimore, with Bill
Fraser as the odious beady-eyed Sergeant Claude Snudge, who
together had responsibility for the men in Hut 29 of the Surplus
Ordnance Depot at Nether Hopping in remote Staffordshire.
Modelled on the 1956 film Private's Progress, the concept was simple: a group of men serving out time as
conscripts in the army are determined to dodge duty and derive
maximum fun out of a situation they'd rather not be in.
The fact that National Service was still compulsory in Britain
when the series began, and also that the Second World War had only
been over for 12 years, meant that audiences could readily
identify with the situation, and sympathise with the plight of the
conscript.
Michael Medwin (later replaced by Harry Fowler) led as motley a
crew of conscripts as you're ever likely to meet, played by
Bernard Bresslaw, Norman Rossington, Charles Hawtrey (whose
character was heavily into knitting) and Alfie Bass, who portrayed
Private "Excused Boots" Bisley.
Bresslaw displayed a
minus IQ in the series and had a catchphrase of "I only
arsked" which became the title of a 1958 film spin-off.
Mostly
broadcast live to air, the show spawned a Top 5 pop hit in 1958
with its theme tune. But not everyone saw the funny side of The Army Game, and a
real serving officer believed it to be a corrupting influence and
decreed that the men in his command should not watch it.
He
relented after the cast heard of his edict and "invaded"
his headquarters.
 The cast of The Army Game changed a great deal over the
years (remarkably, for a short while, three of the characters were
played by different actors before their principals returned to the
roles), with most of the original members leaving after the second
series.
That slow drain of thespian talent - Charles Hawtrey, Bernard
Bresslaw, William Hartnell and Michael Medwin were among the first
to go - proved the show's undoing.
New arrivals who felt honour-bound to devise skiving stratagems
included the cowardly Private Bone, Corporal 'Flogger' Hoskins
(another Cockney sharpster, to replace the departed Springer) and
Private 'Chubby' Catchpole, played by Dick Emery (whose stock line
"Hello, honky tonks" he took into his later solo show).
The episodes of The Army Game that have survived the
passing years do not seem anywhere near as funny now as they once
were, probably because the era of National Service has since long
passed into the memory.
One further peacetime army sitcom was tried in the 1970s (Get
Some In!) but, otherwise, subsequent service productions have
harked back further, to the war years, the most notable example
being the BBC's Dad's Army (Frank Williams - the vicar in Dad's
Army - was the dithering Captain Pocket in The Army Game.)
In 1960, Alfie Bass and Bill Fraser marched their beloved
characters into civvy street for Bootsie and
Snudge.
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