The Best Episodes Directed By David Croft

After Maria is sent to Lieutenant Gruber with the sausage containing the real painting of the Fallen Madonna for copying, she is caught by General Von Klinkerhoffen, who places the sausage in his wardrobe and holds Maria hostage until his motor mower engine is returned by the Resistance. Herr Flick, the Colonel, the Captain and René hear about this and decide to go to the chateau through the secret passage and steal the sausage from under the General's nose, using Helga, Yvette and Lieutenant Gruber as a honey trap.

There are still no batteries for the wireless radio underneath the bed of René's mother-in-law, so Michelle's newest harebrained scheme is to have René and Yvette powering it with the generator from a bicycle until the stolen batteries from a German miniature submarine are delivered. The Lieutenant has finished copying the paintings (The Fallen Madonna and the Van Gogh) and delivers them as sausages. Numerous other sausages also arrive: real ones from Captain Bertorelli, submarine batteries from Leclerc, and explosives from Officer Crabtree, and soon they're all mixed up in the German officers' trousers!

The Gestapo and the Italians plan to infiltrate the Resistance. Little do they know that René and friends are waiting for them.

Hans mistakes the nitro for gin and accidentally blows up the railway himself! The Germans capture René, Yvette, and the peasant-disguised Colonel and Captain. As Helga, Leclerc, and Edith each attempt to help the gang escape, General Von Klinkerhoffen arrives in town and demands that the only known saboteur be shot. This means René's death by firing squad, with Lieutenant Gruber in charge of the squad!

Having ran away from the duel with Monsieur Alphonse, René hides. He's rescued by Michelle of the Resistance who smuggles him back into the café dressed as a member of the Resistance, while she explains to Monsieur Alphonse that René is the bravest man in France. But Herr Flick has captured the Colonel and the Captain, and brings in René as well, and threatens to torture them unless they reveal where the painting of the Fallen Madonna with the Big Boobies is hidden. They are rescued by General Von Klinkerhoffen. With life back to normal, there's only the matter of getting the British airmen out. As the General imposes a curfew, Michelle's plan is a funeral for Madame Fanny.

We pick up the action mere moments after the close of the previous episode, as the airmen-filled cow narrowly escapes being milked by a German patrol while awaiting the landing of the plane. As they watch in disappointment, the plane does not land, and instead jettisoning two parachutes, one of which yields a new escape package; the other, Officer Crabtree, sent from "British Ontelligence Headquitters". Disguised as a policeman, he is supposed to blend in. Unfortunately, his French is abominable, getting the vowels wrong as often as not. Meanwhile, the plan to blow up the non-painting-filled knockwurst on its way to Hitler has hit a snag: René can't find anyone to blow up the train.

After the Colonel's and the Captain's uniforms are borrowed by the British airmen, and later burned, they have to send for replacements. Supplied by Michelle are carrier pigeons, which Madame Edith accidentally cooks and serves to Herr Otto Flick.

The sausage containing the painting of the Fallen Madonna, which was taken by Lieutenant Gruber's dog, is minced by the Lieutenant – but fortunately he discovers it first and saves it. At the same time, the missing knockwurst means that Monsieur Alphonse cannot get back the money which he lent to pay the ransom of the stolen sausage. The Resistance pays him back with Monsieur Leclerc's badly forged money. But after everything seems to be getting back to normal, the sausage is sent to Lieutenant Gruber to make another copy. Also, Michelle's latest plan to get the British airmen back is by an old plane with the engine from General Von Klinkerhoffen's motor mower.

With René again in the possession of the sausage containing the painting of the Fallen Madonna, attention turns to getting the two British airmen out of France. Michelle's newest harebrained scheme of getting the airmen out is a steam engine tour through Nouvion, and will of course require eighty metres of braces, and it's René's job to get them from every Frenchman in Nouvion. Herr Flick and Helga arrive in his staff car to spy on the show.

After the plot to get the two British airmen out failed, a frustrated René returns to the painting of the Fallen Madonna. He hides it behind an ugly painting in his café which is immediately recognised by General Von Klinkerhoffen as a Van Gogh and requisitioned for his office in the chateau. He also requisitions the two new maids in Café René – or as they are better known: the two British airmen in disguise. Realising that the two airmen will be recognised right away, Michelle of the Resistance comes up with another harebrained scheme of digging a tunnel from Monsieur Alphonse's mortuary into the prisoner-of-war camp and smuggling in the two airmen.

While the Captain is sitting in the café, Herr Flick of the Gestapo is listening when René is talking to London on the wireless. He soon cracks the code of the message as the plan to dig a tunnel from the mortuary to hide the British airmen. But it's soon apparent that the two airmen and Monsieur Alphonse need help with the digging, and the café staff are called in, leaving Madame Fanny and Leclerc in the café. But the Colonel and the Captain follow René, discover the tunnel, and are captured in the prisoner-of-war camp.

Since Maria's disappearance, the café needs another waitress, but René and Edith have somewhat different ideas about who should fill the position, but finally Michelle of the Resistance brings tiny Mimi from another cell to be René's bodyguard. In the meantime, General Von Klinkerhoffen gives the Colonel a new assistant - Italian liaison Captain Bertorelli.

The Germans arrest René, and the Colonel demands an explanation for the knockwursts with explosives in them. After a small lie, René is sent home with around a dozen knockwursts to hang in his kitchen. Meanwhile, the British have sent a spy camera with which the Resistance should be able to photograph the plans for the German invasion of Great Britain, but the camera landed in the vineyard of Monsieur Alphonse, and since the Germans commandeered the vineyard, the Resistance cannot go and look for the camera. This problem is solved when the General orders every peasant in Nouvion to work on the vineyard, which also leaves room for some assassination attempts on the General's life.

Herr Flick is still held in the dungeons, and if he cracks he can divulge that the painting of the Fallen Madonna has been copied. That´s why he must be rescued by Helga, Von Smallhausen, and René - dressed as Himmler. The Colonel and the Lieutenant are ordered by the General to let Herr Flick die in a rescue attempt by the Resistance, but seeing the danger of getting caught in a crossfire, they dress up as Gestapo officers to rescue Herr Flick, only to find René chained up instead.

The latest escape plan for the British airmen involves them wading along the canal underneath a tin bath. Herr Flick and Von Smallhausen pose as escaped British airmen, hoping to be picked up by the Resistance. The Resistance have built a communication post in René's 'grave', in an effort to get around German jamming of their radio signals. René, Edith and Monsieur Alphonse try it out. René gets caught on the aerial and is hoisted above his 'grave'. Lieutenant Gruber sees him and thinks it's the ghost of René's 'twin brother'.

René tries to hide from the seconds of Monsieur Alphonse, the undertaker, but in his stead Lieutenant Gruber accepts the duel. However, the Colonel and the Captain want to save René and plan an exercise to "accidentally" kill Monsieur Alphonse. The plan is thwarted by Herr Flick, who has discovered that the sausage that was sent to Berlin containing the painting of the Fallen Madonna with the Big Boobies did not contain any painting – either real or fake. Herr Flick correctly assumes that the Colonel and the Captain stole the painting, and arrests them and cancels the exercise. Now René has to fight the duel on his own, while Yvette and Maria grieve on the sidelines and his wife Edith catches up on the gossip of the week.

The Gestapo suspects that the Colonel and the General are in on a plot to assassinate Hitler, so Herr Flick goes undercover as Private Irma Von Kinkenrotten and plants a somewhat bizarre daffodil-shaped microphone in the Colonel's office, where Gruber and Von Strohm are making plans to get rid of Bertorelli in some way. Meanwhile, as Edith prepares for her wedding, René and company must get the aerial for their new radio above the jamming signal of Herr Flick, so they disguise Mimi as a small nun to obtain a box kite which they fly to contact London and request plastic explosives to blow up the safe in the General's chateau to get the British Invasion plans.

The Colonel, the Captain and Herr Flick are all disguised as onion sellers while the German uniforms are being remade by the Jewish tailors of London. Michelle delivers a bottle of nitro-glycerin disguised as a bottle of Bols Gin to hide in the café until they come to fetch it that night to blow up a German railway.

The Communist Resistance want to make a martyr out of the dead René, and kidnap the Colonel and the Captain at the Captain's birthday party. To make matters worse, they offer them on a platter to René's supposed twin brother, so that he can shoot them.

The Colonel's birthday party is the perfect opportunity to retrieve the real painting of the Fallen Madonna with the Big Boobies from Herr Flick, and substitute it with the forgery. The plan is to not invite Herr Flick but make sure that he hears about the big binge – a traditional feast with genuine Bavarian dances featuring girls dressed as the Hitler Youth – so that he will have to come. In the meantime, René and Edith are to enter the office of Herr Flick to make the switch. Of course, they fail – which means Herr Flick now has both the fake and the original plus a second forgery, which he commissioned in order to fund his marriage with Helga after the war.

René is caught in a dilemma when he must choose between the women he loves: his waitresses Yvette and Maria, and his wife Edith, who, as his widow, has all his money. Unfortunately, he cannot bring himself to woo Edith again, so Edith seeks the attention that she can get from other suitors in town.

After failing to destroy the train, which will take the copy of the painting of the Fallen Madonna with the Big Boobies to Hitler, René and the Captain are captured by the Resistance, only to be rescued by Herr Flick. The Colonel and the Captain are afraid that Hitler will understand that the painting is a copy, and prepare to escape to Switzerland. In the meantime, British agent in disguise, Officer Crabtree, has a new escape plan for the British airmen.

Having been trapped in the POW camp, René is enlisted in the plan to re-dig the tunnel, by getting rid of the dirt. Von Strohm and Geering are playing cricket, though not very well, and Herr Flick and Von Smallhausen are digging their own tunnel into the camp. Monsieur Alphonse arrives at the café to report to Fanny the news that René has been captured, but René and company join in on the British prisoners' plan to escape – though it will free only one man. Meanwhile, Helga reports the situation to Gruber, and together they devise a plan to rescue the Colonel, the Captain and René - involving Gruber dressing as a nun!

Dressed as girls from the Folies Bergère, the entire gang (the staff and the Germans) escape from the prisoner-of-war camp, and completely against plans bring the two British airmen with them. Outside again, the Colonel finds that the Captain is missing; only his glasses are found. Herr Flick and Von Smallhousen intercept a message from London and try to send their own, but René catches on and tosses the radio out of the window, which leaves the Resistance without a means to contact London, until Michelle suggests the radio in Lieutenant Gruber's little tank.

After the British airmen are gone for good – or so René thinks – there is still the problem of Herr Flick owning all three copies of the Fallen Madonna with the Big Boobies (the original and two fakes), and while Herr Flick kidnaps Lieutenant Gruber (a former art house worker), the Colonel and the Captain start to plan their next move. All the while, René's widow Edith has found René's will, and being the sole beneficiary, goes on a spending spree with René's money to attract better suitors. And the British airmen return as nuns. They are last seen hidden in the piano.