‘THE CORNISH FLORAL DANCE’ (TV)

Please feel free to comment on my review.

‘The Cornish Floral Dance’ was the third ‘Christmas Night with the Stars’ mini-episode of ‘Dad’s Army’, shown on the 25th of December 1970. The episode doesn’t exist, due to it being wiped from the BBC Archives. Thankfully, there’s an audio recording of the episode.

Originally, the audio recording was released on ‘The Christmas Specials’ DVD of ‘Dad’s Army’ as a special feature. No photo stills for the mini-episode exist. Thus, set designs of the church hall were used to set up the scenes with subtitles explaining what’s happening.

There were also subtitles providing behind-the-scenes information on ‘The Cornish Floral Dance’ episode. Lately, ‘The Cornish Floral Dance’ has been given the animation treatment on ‘The Missing Episodes’ DVD in 2023, which I’m very pleased about indeed.

However, the animation is in black-and-white and not in colour, which is a shame, and it feels more like it’s from Series 2 instead of Series 4. 😐 ‘The Cornish Floral Dance’ survives in the radio version of ‘The Godiva Affair’ and it was in the 1970s ‘Dad’s Army’ stage show.

In the mini-episode, the ‘Dad’s Army’ team, Bill Pertwee as Chief Warden Hodges and ladies of the Women’s Voluntary Service rehearse a performance of the Cornish Floral Dance. The ladies are the Fred Tomlinson Singers singing in the mini-episode, I believe. 🙂

I found it funny when Jonesy came in too soon during his singing in the rehearsal. It was also funny when Wilson played the piano too soon, much to Mainwaring’s irritation. And it was hilarious when Pike was doing his solo and he was singing ‘boy/girl’ instead of ‘boy’. 🙂

On the ‘Dad’s Army – The Missing Episodes’ DVD, as well as the colourised version of ‘Room at the Bottom’, there’s the ‘Missing in Action’ making-of documentary narrated by Terry Molloy, a deleted scene from the animation version of ‘The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Walker’, animation test footage, a ‘Newsnight’ item, a ‘BBC South Today’ item, a compilation of original BBC1 continuity announcements, a photo gallery and an animation gallery.

‘The Cornish Floral Dance’ (TV) rating – 7/10