'Allo 'Allo! - Complete series 1-9

René runs a small café in France during World War II. He always has his hands full: He's having affairs with his waitresses, keeps his wife happy, tries to please the German soldiers who frequent his café, and runs an operation for the Resistance.

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'ALLO 'ALLO! - Complete series 1 to 9 - All 85 episodes

Set during World War II, 'Allo 'Allo! tells the story of Renι Artois, a French cafι owner in the village of Nouvion. Germans have occupied the village and stolen all of its valuable artefacts. These include the first cuckoo clock ever made and a painting of The Fallen Madonna with the Big Boobies by Van Clomp. The commandant of the town has decided to keep them for himself after the war and forces Renι to hide the painting in his cafι. Hitler also wants the painting for himself, and sends Herr Otto Flick of the Gestapo to the town to find it. Flick, in turn, conspires to keep it for himself. The painting is duplicated by a forger, get mixed-up and put in knackwurst sausages. One is sent to Hitler on an ammunition train, which gets blown up, one is hidden and the other is eaten for dinner by Flick himself.

At the same time, the cafι is being used as a safe house for two brave but clueless downed British airmen. Renι is forced to work with the all-women Resistance, who would otherwise shoot him for serving Germans in his cafι. The far-fetched plans of the Resistance to get the airmen back to England always fail (except at one point when a truckload of British Airmen mixed with disguised German Generals: in that case it wasn't successful in bringing their two Airmen back to England as the truck was filled to capacity). These are one of the main running gags of the series. As part of these plans, the Resistance have placed a radio in the bedroom of Renι's mother-in-law. This secret communication device between London and the resistance (codename "Nighthawk") is hidden under the bed, and incoming messages are signalled by triggering the light bulbs concealed in the bed-knobs, leading the elderly mother-in-law to cry "Ze flashing knobs!" Renι answers with "'Allo, 'allo, zis is Night'awk, are you receiving me?", hence the title of the show ("allτ" is the normal French way of greeting someone over a remote communication system).

Renι is also trying to keep his affairs with his two waitresses secret from his wife Edith (who regularly sings in the cafι, although she is an appallingly bad singer, which she does not realise). In addition, the women-only Communist Resistance members are plotting against Renι for serving Germans and working with the Gaullist Resistance. Ironically, the Communist Resistance only blow things up for money. The only reason that they do not shoot Renι is that their leader is in love with him, a fact he has to hide from both his wife and his waitresses. Furthermore, the seemingly gay German Lieutenant Gruber is also continually flirting with Renι. These situations are even more humorous by the fact that Renι is not exactly the best looking man in France, is hardly a hero, and is often forced by his wife to do missions and secret operations. One memorable situation was when Edith pointed a gun at Renι to stop him from running away to hide with his cousin (when interrupted by the Colonel and the Captain, he said that his wife was proposing to him).

Renι's death at the hands of a German firing squad was faked in an early episode, and throughout most of the show's run, he has to pose as his own twin brother, and to convince his wife to marry him again in order to regain ownership of his cafι. In the meantime, Renι's wife is wooed by Monsieur Alfonse, the village undertaker, who is torn between his love for her and his admiration for Renι whom he considers to be a true hero of France.

These few plot devices provide the basic storyline throughout the entire series, on which are hung classic farce set-ups, physical comedy and visual gags, amusingly ridiculous fake accents, a large amount of sexual innuendo and a fast-paced running string of broad cultural clichιs. Each episode builds on the previous ones, often requiring one to have seen the previous episode in order to fully understand the plot. At the start of each subsequent episode, Renι would summarise the plot to date to the audience in a gag based on the "As you remember..." device commonly used in serials. A recurring theme within individual episodes is that of independent plots aiming for a common objective ending up cancelling out each other's effectiveness.

Source: Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allo_Allo

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See the list of episodes and other details under Additional information.

Additional information

Episodes

Series 1 & 2 (3 discs)

Series 3 & 4 (3 discs)

Series 5 (4 discs)

Series 6 & 7 (3 discs)

Series 8 & 9 (3 discs)

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