It Ain't Half Hot Mum (1974)

Directed by

Bob Spiers

Genre

sitcom

Country

United Kingdom

Length

8 seasons, 56 episodes

Rated

12

Rating

7.3 of 10 from 18 voters

Elsewhere

IMDb

How it feels

It is a British sitcom set during World War Two about a group of performers in a Royal Artillery concert party in India and Burma. The show follows their efforts to put on shows and their interactions with each other.

livelydatedcomediclightheartednostalgicbreezycampysatirical

What happens

It Ain't Half Hot Mum is a British television sitcom about a Royal Artillery concert party based in Deolali in British India and the fictional village of Tin Min in Burma, during the final months of the Second World War. It was written by Jimmy Perry and David Croft, who had both served in similar roles in India during that war. Fifty-six episodes were broadcast across eight series on BBC1 between 1974 and 1981, most of which cover a real-time historical period of approximately thirteen weeks. Each episode ran for thirty minutes. The title originates from the first episode, in which young Gunner Parkin (Christopher Mitchell) writes home to his mother in England. In 1975, a recording of "Whispering Grass" performed by Don Estelle and Windsor Davies in character as Gunner "Lofty" Sugden and Sergeant Major Williams (respectively), reached number one on the UK singles chart and remained there for three weeks. The series, which attracted up to seventeen million viewers in its heyday, has been accused of racism, homophobia, and a pro-imperialist attitude. One specific criticism has been the casting of Michael Bates, a white actor who was born in India and fluent in Urdu, as an Indian character, which required him to wear darkening makeup that some have compared to blackface. (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

Trailer

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