Joe Maddison's War

A few well-known faces (including Derek Jacobi) can't lift this awful drama.

The stilted and silly script is further hampered by the bloody annoying interruptions of vintage news footage. It's presumably there to lead us through the time-line but just serves to annoy the viewer when it jumps on stage unexpectedly.

Joe Maddison is a burdened WW1 veteran who has survived The Somme. As the next great war breaks out, his wife leaves then later comes back while he's keeping company with a war widow. She's up the duff with someone else's baby while he and his chums make a mockery of the newly formed Home Guard in Tyneside.

There's a lot of anti-war posturing in this program and it gets in the way of the story. What might have been a darkly comic look at some ageing and shell-shocked Home Guardsmen is just a hackneyed sketch about silly, childish old men who create their own silly childish problems.

Not one for the UK TV Hall of Fame time capsule!