Toby Jones: 'The Dad's Army film was one long panic station!'

Toby Jones admits that he was daunted about taking on Arthur Lowe's role as pompous Captain Mainwaring in the forthcoming film version of classic sitcom Dad's Army.

"It was nerve-wracking and one long panic station," Toby tells TV & Satellite Week. "But I kept looking around at the other actors and thinking, 'They seem all right, they have all agreed to do it and no one is laughing at me to my face, except in the right way.' So you have to draw comfort from that!"

Toby, who also appears in Fox's spooky thriller Wayward Pines in May, will play the no-nonsense head of the Walmington-on-Sea Home Guard alongside Bill Nighy as Sergeant Wilson, Tom Courtenay as Corporal Jones, Michael Gambon as Private Godfrey, Daniel Mays as Private Walker and Blake Harrison as Private Pike.

Catherine Zeta-Jones, Sarah Lancashire and Alison Steadman will also star in the film, which will be released in February next year.

 

Caren Clark

Caren has been a journalist specializing in TV for almost two decades and is a Senior Features Writer for TV Times, TV & Satellite Week and What’s On TV magazines and she also writes for What to Watch.


Over the years, she has spent many a day in a muddy field or an on-set catering bus chatting to numerous stars on location including the likes of Olivia Colman, David Tennant, Suranne Jones, Jamie Dornan, Dame Judi Dench and Sir Derek Jacobi as well as Hollywood actors such as Glenn Close and Kiefer Sutherland.


Caren will happily sit down and watch any kind of telly (well, maybe not sci-fi!), but she particularly loves period dramas like Call the Midwife, Downton Abbey and The Crown and she’s also a big fan of juicy crime thrillers from Line of Duty to Poirot.


In her spare time, Caren enjoys going to the cinema and theatre or curling up with a good book.