'Allo 'Allo!: Difference between revisions

[[File:alloallo1.jpg|frame|Frankly, [[Kavorka Man|I don't understand]] why he is so popular with the ladies]]

 

 

A 1980s BBC sitcom, set in Occupied France during [[World War II]]. Lasted from December, 1982 to December, 1992. A total of 85 episodes in nine seasons.

 

 

* Bad French accents. In fact, all of the accents were bad, [[Beyond the Impossible|including the British ones]]. Whilst all the dialogue was actually in English, comical 'national' accents were used to imply the language being spoken -- several times, a 'French' character overhears a conversation in e.g. a British accent, then tells another 'Frenchman' (in the show's default French-accented English) they have no idea what was said, as they don't speak English.

* Multiple character and actor replacements of various types - [[Suspiciously Similar Substitute|Suspiciously Similar Substitutes]] for Leclerc, and various waitresses. [[The Other Darrin]], for the Italian Captain. [[The Nth Doctor]], for Herr Flick in later seasons, whose actor is replaced, and the change explained by [[Magic Plastic Surgery]]. Subverted, inverted, or simply trashed completely by Rene himself, who spent most of the series' run posing as his non-existent twin brother - ie, the same actor playing the same character, posing as a non-existent different character, well-known or undetected in-universe as the plot required....

* A very big [[Story Arc]] involving a painting. (Namely "The Fallen Madonna with the Big Boobies")

* Two very stereotypical British pilots and the Resistance's disastrous plans to get them back to England.

* More [[Double Entendre|double entendres]] than you can (ahem) shake a stick at. See immediately above for one of the milder examples.

 

 

A one-off [[Reunion Show]] was aired in 2007.

 

* [[All Girls Want Bad Boys]]: It's the cruelty what arouses Helga in Herr Flick.

* [[Ambiguously Gay]] -- Lt. Gruber. Camp as all get-out, and flirts endlessly with René. The [[Distant Finale]] makes it decidedly ''un''ambiguous, as he's hooked up with {{spoiler|Helga}}.

*** In fact, [[Harry Enfield and Chums|Harry Enfield]] once claimed that the show had so many catchphrases, all of which appeared at least [[Once an Episode]], that there were only about ten minutes' worth of original dialogue per show. It nonetheless stayed fresh because so many situational spins could be put on the catchphrases.

* [[Chekhov's Gun]] -- Subverted with the three suicide pill rings; they all turn out to be duds.

** Or removing his false moustache to reveal the almost identical real moustache underneath.

** As René put it:

* [[The Comically Serious]] -- A poker-faced Herr Flick ("That was very amusing."), Helga and Michelle.

* [[Continuity Lock Out]]: The increasingly complicated plots can lead to this. However, René does [[Breaking the Fourth Wall|recap the events of the previous episode]] to the audience at the start of each new one - though this is done at least partly to [[Lampshade]] how ridiculous the situation he's in is.

* [[Fan Service]] -- The vibrating ice cream truck for a start. Actually the series is pretty full of fanservice in general, though it admittedly never quite keeps pace with the [[Double Entendre|double entendres]]. Female characters (come to think of it, quite a lot of the male ones, too) are forever baring legs for increasingly spurious reasons, and it's about 30% odds on a pantyshot per episode (again, some of them are male).

** It's difficult to work out if this strictly speaking counts as fan service as such. Were people tuning in to see Helga get undressed? Who can say, but this was a family show... What we do know is that quite a lot of British comedy from the 70's and 80's had girls dancing around in their underwear for no obvious reason and this was more a genre convention than a deliberate attempt by any particular show to boost ratings. Scantily clad young women show up right from the get-go but there was never really a 'demand' from anyone (or any fan interaction as we now know it).

* [[The Fun in Funeral]]: René's funeral. As René isn't dead his coffin is filled with garbage and bombs the resistance need to get rid of. While on the way to the cemetery the cart with the coffin gets away. It explodes when it reaches the end of the road.

** Oh god that's not he half of it. There was also the second painting, the Colonel's gold, the two forgeries of the two paintings each (Because General Klinkerhoffen thought he was getting the original while sending the forgeries to Hitler but they both got forgeries. The real paintings would go to René and the Germans in theory but with everyone trying to short everyone it all got horrible confused.), a whole season focused on getting the Invasion plans, and certain Macguffins that lasted two or three episodes, the forged Gestapo money, the T5 land mines, the exploding Christmas puddings etc. And that's just in one season imagine 9 SEASONS of this mess And enough gambits by the resistance and the Germans to try and liberate France/Get the British Airmen home/ Defeat the communist resistance and the Germans to make some money out of the mess/ not get sent to the Russian front. This is ignoring the bumbling by the Gestapo, Communist resistance and Berterelli.

* [[Giftedly Bad]]: Edith at singing.

* [[Human Mail]] -- Maria in 'Allo 'Allo! leaves the show this way, getting accidentally mailed to Switzerland. She's replaced by Mimi in the next episode.

* [[Hypercompetent Sidekick]]: Von Smallhausen has a shade of this as he is definitely more level-headed that Herr Flick who usually focuses on [[Rube Goldberg Device|extremely complex plots]] and is oblivious of the most obvious solutions.

** [[Lampshaded]] when Michelle started coming-on to him purely for manipulative reasons. Yvette learned of this and Michelle promised to dump him when the war was over, asking what the hell Yvette saw in him anyway. Yvette began comparing him to many cultural references of the time, from Michelle's reaction she also seemed at a loss as to why Yvette liked those things either.

* [[Insane Admiral]]: Naturally [[Played for Laughs]] with every visiting general and colonel (not to mention the resident ones) falling squarely into this trope.

* [[Lampshade Hanging]]: "Ah! Colonel! How nice that you should come into my Cafe at this precise moment!" Also, many of René's opening monologues to camera feature the tendency to lampshade the implausibility of events surrounding him.

** A priceless cuckoo clock is stolen, hidden and used as a MacGuffin for the better part of a season, then apparently [[Aborted Arc|forgotten by the writers]]. When, several seasons later, it's once again included in the list of stolen artifacts, René remarks "I had forgotten about the cuckoo clock..."

*** Not to mention in the play you also get General von Schmelling.

* [[My Card]]: Monsieur Alphonse's "Swiftly and With Style".

* [[National Stereotypes]]: The French, Germans, British and Italians all fit into this trope.

* [[No Fourth Wall]]

* [[Not What It Looks Like]] -- When René cuddles with one of the waitresses and his wife suddenly bursts in and gets suspicious, he promptly utters the catchphrase "You stupid woman!" and offers an improvised explanation. And Edith ''always'' buys it.

* [[Oblivious to His Own Description]]: Gruber, reading out the resistance's leaflet mocking the members of the German military staff:

* [[The Other Darrin]] -- Several times: Capitan Bertorelli, twice for LeClerc (though one of the replacements was specifically declared to be his brother), and also Herr Flick in the final season.

** subverted, or perhaps inverted, by the fact that for reasons not worth explaining, Rene spent most of the programme's run being passed off as his non-existent twin brother - ie the same actor playing the same character generally believed in-universe to be a non-existent different character.....

** Happens in a different way with Herr Flick and Herr von Smallhausen. Usually their disguises are a lot more convincing than those worn by the French characters, but they undo this by continuing to act like Gestapo officers, regardless of what they're supposed to be disguised as.

** Virtually every single disguise (which are numerous given the nature of the show) is as paper-thin as possible (including moustached nuns) for purely comedic purposes.

** Possibly disguised better than usual as Hill spent most of the series almost invisible under her huge night-cap, with her body hidden under blankets.

* [[Punch Clock Villain]] -- the Nazis.

** Subverted with the British Airmen: the cast spent the entire series attempting to put them on a bus, but it never stuck.

* [[Queer People Are Funny]]: Gruber. As an example when Captain Bertorelli is introduced to the Colonel, Helga, and Gruber he gives the first 2 kisses on the cheek, then shakes Grubers hand.

** Apart from the catch phrases René is always embraching Yvette when Edith comes in, yet manages to think up a halfbaked excuse to explain the awkward situation.

** Leclerc always enters in an obvious disguise, yet he still feels the need to explain who he is.

* [[Series Fauxnale]] -- The last episode of the ''second'' season was written as the [[Series Finale]], because the show's producer thought there was zero chance of it being renewed for a third season. As it turned out though, he was quite wrong.

* [[Serious Business]] -- Most of the show, but especially anything Herr Flick does. You might think his excessively serious persona is a facade to make his gestapo work easier, but if it is he has long since [[Becoming the Mask|become the mask]].

* [[Something Else Also Rises]] -- Frequently. With medals, hair, baguettes, policemen's batons, knockwurst sausages... the list goes on.

* [[The Spock]]: Herr Flick.

* [[Suspiciously Similar Substitute]] -- Le Clerc's brother. In a parody, René also has his death faked in the first season and spends the rest of the show posing as his identical twin brother with the same name, although this is forgotten by most of the characters (even the Colonel, despite him being the one who ''orchestrated the deception'') after about a season and only brought up in order to make a joke.

* [[That Came Out Wrong]] -- When Rene is posing as his own twin brother and said he comes from the city of Nancy, Gruber asks if that was also true of his 'late brother':

* [[Those Wacky Nazis]]

* [[Time Skip]] -- The first seven seasons took place over only a few months, then two years pass between the seventh and eighth.

* [[Translation Convention]] -- Since the English dialogue is "really" in French, other accents denoted other languages. Michelle would adopt a plummy I-say-chaps accent when speaking English to the British airmen, and Officer Crabtree's [[Malaproper|malapropisms]] - "Good moaning! I was just pissing by..." - are due to his poor command of French.

** Also, an odd syntax is used to help suggest French's different grammar (such as René saying things like "it is the bed of the mother of my wife!" without possessives).

** And his affairs with his two waitresses have, according to Herr Flick in series 7, given him the nickname "Menage Artois".

* [[What Do You Mean Its Not Symbolic]]: Maria or René implies Gruber isn't interested in her but what they brought: and they pull out the sausage...

'''Rene:''' 'E is the one with the big 'ooter. }}

** This is most likely nodding at how the Brits see De Gaulle compared to the French. While he's a hero and great political leader to the French, he is definitively not the English. Any respect he gained during [[WW 2]] (as a general and organizing the French resistance) immediately began to wane as he continually demanded that France be treated on equal terms with the Great Powers (despite it being full of Germans and lacking any military assets). Furthermore, in the years to follow he vetoed British membership to the European Community twice, withdrew France from NATO command and followed independent foreign policy, which as you might imagine went down quite badly what with the constant worry of soviet invasion and all. While the French, and certainly French nationalist, look upon him fondly, to us across the channel, he will always be "the one with the big 'ooter"

 

{{reflist}}

[[Category:Comedy Series]]

[[Category:British Series]]

[[Category:The Eighties]]

[[Category:Britcom]]