The Best Episodes Directed By David Croft

Alf and Ivy are settled into their new jobs but things soon hot up when Sir Ralph suspects that his wife, Lady Agatha, is having an affair. Lord Meldrum's car is vandalised – someone has daubed the word "fornicator" on the side which causes a panic when the Bishop wants to use the vehicle.

Lady Lavender sends for her solicitor whom she instructs to give Ivy her shares from the Union Jack Rubber Company. James is tortured by thoughts of Miss Poppy after she asks to feel his muscles. Then Lavender sends for her solicitor again.

Alf is being blackmailed by the local pawn broker into letting him burgle the house. Lord Meldrum allows Cissy & Poppy to hold an evening of progressive poetry in the dining room. At last the relationship between Alf and Ivy is revealed to James.

Lady Lavender throws her money out of the window and into the street, naturally some of the money goes astray when Alf gets his hands on it...

To protect his master, Alf tells Sir Ralph that Lord Meldrum was wounded in the Artillery. Ivy is over the moon when James agrees to take her to the pictures. Mrs. Lipton is convinced that Alf's divorce is being held up by his wife...

James is embarrassed when his father arrives at the house on the run from the police. The servants decide to hide him until they can arrange for him to flee the country...

Excitement runs through the household when it is announced that the King and Queen of Dalmatia are coming to dinner, although Mrs. Lipton is upset to find that she will not be doing the catering. In addition, Noel Coward is expected to join them after the opening night of his new play...

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

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 Klinckerhofen, who places the sausage in his wardrobe and helds Maria hostage until his lawn mover engine is returned by the Resistance. Herr Flick, the Colonel and the Captain, and René hears about this and decides to go to the chateau through the secret passages and steal the sausage from under the General's nose, using Helga, Yvette and Lieutenant Gruber as erotical bait.

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

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!

We pick up the action mere moments after the close of the previous episode, as the airmen-filled cow narrowly escape being milked by a German patrol while awaiting the landing of the plane. As they watch disappointedly, the plane does not land, and instead jettisoning two parachutes, one of which yields a new escape package. The other yields 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 René ran away from the duel with Monsieur Alphonse, he hides. He's rescued by Michelle from 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 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 a matter of getting the British airmen out. As the General imposes a curfew, Michelle's plan is a funeral for Madame Fanny.

René is forced to masquerade as the head of the Gestapo, Heinrich Himmler himself, in an attempt to rescue Frau Von Kinkenrotten from prison. Of course, this is actually Herr Flick, still in his earlier disguise.

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'.

Since Maria's disappearance, the café needs another waitress, but René and Edith has somewhat different ideas about who should fill the position, but finally Michelle from 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 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's, 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.

After the Colonel's and the Captain's uniforms are borrowed by the British airmen, and later burned, they will have to send for replacement uniforms. 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 leant to pay the ransom of the kidnapped 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 motor from general von Klinkerhoffen's lawn mower.

With René again in the possession of the sausage containing the painting of the Fallen Madonna, the attention turns to getting the two British airmen out of France. Michelle proposes a steam engine tour through Nouvion. Michelle's newest hairbrained scheme of getting the airmen out will of course need 80 meters of suspenders, 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.

While the Captain is sitting in the café, herr Flick from the Gestapo is listening when René is talking to London on the wireless. He soon cracks the code surrounding the message with 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.

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 recognized by General von Klinkerhoffen as a Van Gogh and requisitioned for his office in the chateau. He also requistions the two new maids in Café René – or as they are better known: the two British airmen in disguise. Realizing that the two airmen will be recognized right away, Michelle of the Resistance comes up with another hairbrained scheme of digging a tunnel from Monsieur Alphonse's morgue into the prisoner of war camp and smuggling in the two airmen into the camp.

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 plans 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 & Co. 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 explosive to blow up the safe in the General's chateau to get the British Invasion plans.

Lord Meldrum gives Teddy an ultimatum - marry Madge Cartwright or be sent to work in his factory. Teddy thinks it's a bluff but finds that his brother means every word. Alf discovers that Lady Lavender has got some money stashed under her bed and schemes to relieve her of the burden...