‘FLIGHT TO JAWANI’

Please feel free to comment on my review.

This is actually quite a funny episode in the ‘It Ain’t Half Hot Mum’ series. That is if you ignore the racial stereotypes that are going on in this episode, particularly when Don Estelle as Lofty dresses up as a Chinese man and as a black man during a show. Yeah, even seeing those felt rather uncomfortable.

In the episode, the Concert Party are engaged to perform at a remote air base in Jawani. The men there haven’t seen a woman in years and are rather sex-starved. Once one of the airmen, played by Jeffrey Holland, sees a picture of Gloria in drag, he and everyone else assumes that he’s a woman. 😐

When Concert Party members dressed up as men perform on stage for the RAF men, they chant “We want Gloria” and aren’t very appreciative of the Concert Party’s efforts. Even the Sgt-Major and the RAF men’s superiors can’t calm the men down, and things start to get rowdy and quite nasty indeed.

The Colonel suggests that the Concert Party members should perform without Gloria and even that doesn’t go very well. Gloria then suggests that everyone dresses up as a woman in order to let the audience know that they’re actually men. But even that doesn’t convinced the sex-starved RAF men.

The audience believes that they’re all woman and they chase them off back to their plane. It was so bizarre to see that happening in the episode and I would have thought the RAF men would have seen through the illusion. But I imagine being out in a remote air base in Jawani does things to you. 🙂

This episode does feature a stellar guest cast. As mentioned, there’s Jeffrey Holland, who would go on to be in ‘Hi-De-Hi’, ‘You Rang M’Lord’ and ‘Oh Doctor Beeching’. He also did an episode of ‘Dad’s Army’. There’s Tim Barrett as the commanding officer and Robin Parkinson as the medical officer. 😀

Tim Barrett has been in ‘Dad’s Army’ as well and I’ve seen him as one of the Malcolms in ‘Terry and June’. His character has a twitch in this episode. 😀 Robin Parkinson would go on to be in ‘Allo, ‘Allo’ and has been in an episode of ‘The Brittas Empire’. He also narrated the ‘Button Moon’ kids’ TV show.

The episode also features Freddie Earlle as Buster and Hal Galili as Matt, who pilot the plane taking the Concert Party to Jawani. They, Buster in particular I believe, is mean-spirited to the Concert Party when piloting their plane. There’s also Talat Hussein who is the Control Tower Officer in the episode.

‘Flight to Jawani’ rating – 7/10