Dad's Army - Opening and Closing Credits

Opening and Closing Credits

The show's opening titles were originally intended to feature footage of refugees and Nazi troops, to illustrate the threat faced by the Home Guard. Despite opposition from the BBC's Head of Comedy Michael Mills, Paul Fox, the controller of BBC 1, ordered that these be removed on the grounds that they were offensive. The replacement titles featured the now familiar animated sequence of swastika-headed arrows approaching Britain. In Series 6 they were updated – in all previous versions one of the Nazi arrows passes over the tail of another but then appears under.

The closing credits of the show are a homage to the end credits of the 1944 film The Way Ahead which had covered the training of an everyman platoon during the war and was originally released as a propaganda film in 1943. In both instances, each character is shown as they walk across a smoke-filled battlefield. One of the actors in Dad's Army, John Laurie, also appeared in that film, and his performance in the end credits of The Way Ahead appears to be copied in the sitcom. Coincidentally, the film's lead character (played by David Niven) is named Lt. Jim Perry.