[3][2] Just as Captain Mainwaring gives the go-ahead for a sherry party, his drunken brother Barry turns up to spoil the occasion.
As Mainwaring and the platoon return from an exhausting route march, he discovers Wilson reading Pike's Hotspur comic.
Meanwhile, in a train carriage, a drunken figure with more than a passing resemblance to Mainwaring downs a hip flask of Scotch.
The train stops at Eastbourne, and Frazer joins the man in the carriage, and quickly learns that the drunken man is Mainwaring's black sheep brother Barry, and that he is on his way to Walmington to collect a half-hunter watch that, he claims, Mainwaring stole from him after their father's death.
The party goes well until Barry unexpectedly arrives, wanting to apologise for his earlier behaviour, and gets into a lengthy chat with Chief Warden Hodges, the Vicar and the Verger.
[4] In a 2000 interview with writer Graham McCann, Ian Lavender claimed that this episode was a "real eye-opener" to him, since he realised that the series writers were now comfortable enough to write about any topic (notably the conflict between Captain Mainwaring and his brother Barry) even if it was not specifically related to the Home Guard or the Second World War.
[5] Co-writer David Croft recalled that the episode was "very complicated" to complete, owing to Arthur Lowe's dual role as Captain and Barry Mainwaring.
[6] The episode, which originally aired at 6:05 pm on Friday, 26 December 1975, was watched by 13.6 million viewers, making it the least-watched Christmas special of the series.
[7][8][9] In his 2001 Dad's Army book, Graham McCann claimed that this Christmas special "ended the year in style" for series eight, praising the "glorious tour de force" of Arthur Lowe in his dual role as Captain Mainwaring and his brother Barry.
[11] In the 2007 documentary Dad's Army: The Passing Years, Frank Williams described the episode as being "most wonderful", praising particularly the dual role of Lowe, which he described as being "absolutely brilliant".