It Ain't Half Hot Mum is a British television sitcom, written by Jimmy Perry and David Croft. Set in 1945 during the last months of the Second World War, the series follows members of a concert party of the Royal Artillery. The sitcom ran for eight series, which were broadcast on BBC1 from 3 January 1974 to 3 September 1981.[1] Each series had between six and eight episodes. Fifty-six episodes were created in total, and each had a duration of 30 minutes.[1] Series 1 to 4 were set in Deolali, India, while Series 5 to 8 were set in the fictional village of Tin Min, Burma.[2]
Episodes were filmed from 1973 and 1981, with a break in 1979.[citation needed] Two episodes from the first series, "A Star is Born" and "It's a Wise Child", are currently missing from the BBC Archives, since they were wiped after their repeat broadcasts.[3][4][5] In 1988, two off-air VHS recordings of the missing episodes were discovered in Australia[4][5] by Dave Homewood, the founder of the New Zealand branch of the Dad's Army Appreciation Society. They had been recorded from Australian broadcasts on Channel 7; however, they are incomplete, since Channel 7 edited certain scenes from the episodes so that they would fit within the channel's timeslot.[3] An estimated four minutes has been edited from these episodes.[6]