When 18-year-old David Parker (Christopher Blake) with his grammar school background joins the Army as a regular soldier his hopes are high and he has a commission in mind.
The trouble is that this is 1950, the rest of his intake at Catterick Camp are National Servicemen, and officer selection is often a matter of having been to the right school and coming from the right background.
Unfortunately, every character was a stereotype and the author’s premise – that every public schoolboy was an intellectual moron and every Sandhurst trained officer a ridin’ and huntin’ addict, and both of them faintly homosexual – left Martin Jacobs and Jonathan David little chance to develop any sort of individual character, being treated as a pair of Tweedledee and Tweedledum puppets.
No more fortunate were Jon Glover and John F. Landry whose non-commissioned officers, unable to accept that any recruit was really anxious to learn when shirking was so simple, had no existence outside the writer’s lampoon.
Meanwhile, our young hero David Parker (who, having been to grammar school could no wrong) was as unconvincing as the rest and – despite the sensitive underplaying of Christopher Blake – came across as an irritating prig whose comeuppance might not have been deserved but was certainly not deplored.
The three-part series from Yorkshire Television debuted on Sunday 13 January 1974.
David Parker
Christopher Blake Ramsey
David Dixon Sergeant Walton
Jon Glover Michael Marlowe
Martin Jacobs Sgt Major Nobby Hale
John F. Landry Hammond
Graham Seed Major
Michael Cadman Rifles Major
Brian Cobby Sergeant Potter
Robert Coleby Peter Putnum
Jonathan David Trooper Smiff
Phil Davis Lieutenant-Colonel
Raymond Francis Lady Otley
Sally Home Regimental policeman
David Janes Snell
Michael Stirrup Ashford
Keith Varnier Corporal Skinner
Paul Vaughan-Teague Trooper Amor
Peter Livens
Episodes
Early Arrival | Early Days | Early Breakfast
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