Arthur Lowe

The great television roles not only give the actor room to contribute but seem to draw upon his essential personality. In Dad's Army, Captain Mainwaring is an extension to absurdity of the fastidiousness Arthur Lowe brings to any role. Lowe's precise movements of the hand, as exquisite as Oliver Hardy's, are translated into Mainwaring's ferociously bulled kit, his hundred different low moans as the shambling platoon fails him yet again.

Not that his [Arthur Lowe's] performance is eclectic - it is a subtle unity like everything he attempts. He is also at his peak in the current series of Dad's Army (BBC1), which shows few signs of flagging inspiration.

Spectres of far more horrific half hours haunt the fringes of my memory. It had a nicely matched pair in Arthur Lowe as a portly butler, and Ken Jones as a beery peer. And when John Stevenson has exhausted all the comic possibilities in the name Basket which he must have done in the first instalment, it will leave room for better and less predictable jokes.

Arthur Lowe, the captain of Dad's Army, is its kingpin. And what holds it together. It's no effort to reel back to the days of Dunkirk. You could put Mr Lowe into any era. He is the man for any hour.

It seemed to me to blend sentiment and humour rather uneasily as if afraid of making too much fun of a hallowed wartime institution... The one solid pleasure last night was watching the performance of Arthur Lowe as the organizing hero.