British comedy show Dad’s Army gets cinema reboot with Zeta-Jones, Gambon

Popular British television show Dad’s Army gets a cinema reboot this week in a new comedy hoping to garner the same laughs the sitcom did nearly 40 years after it ended.

The BBC show, which ran from 1968 to 1977, followed the antics of an incompetent Home Guard platoon in the fictional English town of Walmington-on-Sea during the second world war. It is now a TV re-run stalwart.

In the new film, starring Catherine Zeta-Jones, Michael Gambon, Bill Nighy and Toby Jones, the platoon is faced with a spy threat.

Jones, who plays the pompous Captain Mainwaring, said he was not originally interested in taking part in the reboot until other cast members were revealed.

"'Good luck with that, I hope it all works out for you. That sounds like a really bad idea to me.’ That’s my first response to that,” he said.

“[Producers later said] ‘Well, we have found these actors’, and that’s when I go, ‘Ah all right, hang on, I want to be part of it’.”

Veteran actor Tom Courtenay, who plays Corporal “Don’t Panic” Jones, also said he thought the movie “seemed a better idea” once he knew the likes of Harry Potter actor Gambon and Scottish actor Bill Paterson were on board.