Bumbling, doltish, aged and comic, and ultimately very very heroic -- that was Dad's Army, as Britain's Home Guard prepared themselves to be the last defence against Hitler's Germany.

From 1968 to 1977, some 80 episodes of this glorious television comedy, written by Jimmy Perry and David Croft, were broadcast by the BBC. And the series found an immediate audience here, where the members of the Walmington-On-Sea Home Guard platoon became regular visitors to just about every Australian home.

The cast featured Arthur Lowe as Captain Mainwaring (pronounced Mannering, of course), the pompous middle-class bank manager whose pomposity and obtuseness disguises a real nobility of spirit. Lowe really was Mainwaring -- rarely have actor and character merged so perfectly.

Alongside him was the gifted actor John Le Mesurier as Wilson, the upper-class bank-clerk who serves as Mainwaring's Sergeant. Wilson can never quite forget or forgive that though he works for Mainwaring at the Bank, and serves in the Home Guard as his Sergeant, he is in fact his social superior -- it's the British Class or Caste System fully at work, during their Finest Hour.

The other five regulars in the cast are all equally well cast. I won't mention them here; you should know them. If you don't, here's a fine place to start.

There are two 'Best of Dad's Army' discs on sale, and they are also a great introduction to this wonderful comedy series. But I'd suggest this two-disc set first -- here we see the Home Guard being formed. We see them muddling through, improvising how to guard Britain with neither weapons nor uniforms. And, as we move onto Series Two, we see the writers Perry and Croft hone their skill, and the characters gain ever-finer characterisations.

There are the complete six episodes of Series One here, plus the surviving three episodes of Series Two. In fact, only one of the six episodes of Series Two were thought to have survived the BBC's determination to wipe from video-record their finest shows of the 1950s and 1960s -- two of the episodes here were discovered only a couple of years ago, lying undisturbed for 25 years ago in a garden shed. This is true vintage material -- a treasure indeed.

The transfers are as you would expect of vintage black-and-white video material -- a bit fuzzy at times, but never poor enough to stop full enjoyment. Sound is always clear and audible -- in fact, the sound has survived better than the image.

The extras comprise three audio versions done for BBC radio of the still-missing episodes from Season Two -- I expect the actors rolled into a radio studio after taping the television show, and simply read from a slightly-adapted script of each show. 'Rolled' is the operative word -- a recent biography of Arthur Lowe reveals that many of the cast were very heavy drinkers -- but their inebriation rarely seemed to affect their acting.

And there is a fascinating half-hour documentary, Missing: Presumed Wiped, about how the BBC destroyed so much video heritage as it wiped and re-used video tapes over and over again. Given the BBC's apparent determination to destroy its part, it's astonishing just how much material managed to survive.