Death of Frank Williams (the vicar in Dad's Army)

[Neil Jones]

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2022/ju...s-obituary

The actor Frank Williams, who has died aged 90, was best known as the Rev Timothy Farthing in Dad’s Army, one of the BBC’s most popular TV series.

He joined Dad’s Army, which ran from 1968 to 1977 (and has rarely been off the screen since), at the start of the third series, in 1969, when the vicar’s church hall in Walmington-on-Sea was commandeered by the elderly platoon for drill and strategic planning. It was not an arrangement Farthing welcomed.


Williams once described his time in Dad's Army as the 'happiest period of his professional life'.

His passing leaves Ian Lavender as the only original cast member of Dad's Army still alive.  Most of the cast of the show died in the 1980s.

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On a related note, its probably safe to assume an ad-hoc episode of Dad's Army will appear somewhere in the schedule in the near future as a tribute, though that being said BBC Two seems to have stopped airing Dad's Army as of late so it may get shoehorned in there.

[Robertclark125]

I believe he also appeared in both film versions of Dad's Army as well.

[Humphrey Hacker]

The original movie version will be shown this weekend. I don’t know if its a tribute as BBC 2 did show the Porridge Movie last week but it will be regarded as a tribute.Frank Williams always struck me as a actor in the Clive Dunn/David Jason mould of playing older characters.


RIP

[Neil Jones]

To be honest they could have found a better tribute than that film, which was subject to a lot of studio interference at the time and nobody who appeared on screen was particularly happy with the end result. Its probably best seen as an introduction of some sort to the series, even though it sort of breaks the canon set up by the TV show.

The whole TV series was basically one large flashback which was set up in the very first episode, though they soon forgot about that as it was tacked on to appease Paul Fox at the time.

[Humphrey Hacker]

To be honest they could have found a better tribute than that film, which was subject to a lot of studio interference at the time and nobody who appeared on screen was particularly happy with the end result.  Its probably best seen as an introduction of some sort to the series, even though it sort of breaks the canon set up by the TV show.

The whole TV series was basically one large flashback which was set up in the very first episode, though they soon forgot about that as it was tacked on to appease Paul Fox at the time.

I remember reading a book about Dad’s Army and there was a section on a potential sequel. It was about the platoon being despatched to patrol elsewhere and uncovering a nazi plot based in a stately home. Laurence Oliver was planned to be the chief villain.

From Wikipedia

“Discussions were held about a possible sequel, to be called Dad's Army and the Secret U-Boat Base, but the project never came to fruition.[8] A second film was released in 2016 with an almost entirely new cast, also titled Dad's Army.”