Few wartime prisoners have attempted escape quite as many times as bumbling RAF Officer James Forrester. Though Officer Forrester has twenty-three escape attempts to his name, each successive attempt he makes to break free somehow seems to go worse than the last. But this time there's a difference, because Officer Forrester isn't just plotting his own escape, but the escape of all 327 of his fellow prisoners as well - and all at once. In fact even the Germans want to escape!
Acting
Stephen Fry's magnificent buffoonery anchored by Geoffrey Palmer's weary authority
Writing
Dick Clement & Ian La Frenais nail the 'comedy of errors' structure
Director
Adrian Shergold
Stephen Fry
Wing Commander James Forrester
Nicholas Lyndhurst
'Chump' Cosgrove
Geoffrey Palmer
The Kommandant
Sam Kelly
Adolf Hitler
Hugh Bonneville
Sqdn. Ldr. Barton (as Richard Bonneville)
David Bamber
The Prof
Todd Boyce
'Owly' Morrison
Benedick Blythe
Oberst von Steffenberg
Tim McMullan
Donaldson
Steffan Boje
Smithers
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Made for ITV as part of a 1990s wave of British WWII comedies, it deliberately subverts the 'noble prisoner' myth of The Great Escape.
Sam Kelly had already played Hitler in four separate productions; this was his fifth and final Führer.
US
GB
