YMMV / 'Allo 'Allo!

• Alternative Character Interpretation: Gruber and Helga's marriage is revealed in the finale. Was it gay erasure of Gruber? Was Gruber bisexual all along? Or did Helga serve as Gruber's beard whilst indulging her own proclivity for kinky sex and multiple partners? Even in Europe in The1950s a gay man and a woman with Helga's tastes would have faced social scrutiny. Their marriage and the wealth they attained later in life would have provided them with the cover they needed to avoid being seen as scandalous at such a time.
• Awesome Music:
  • The theme track, with French accordions, is a whimsical delight.
  • A Paris concert played a wonderful orchestral version of the theme track.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Lt. Hubert Gruber, largely for his crush on Rene and for being the most adorable "nazi" in fiction.
• Fair for Its Day: Lt. Gruber isn't exactly a perfect example of gay representation: he's the butt of many Queer People Are Funny jokes and the ending has him marry Helga and have children with her, which could be seen as gay erasure (though he could actually be bisexual). But back in The '80s when the show first started airing, simply having a character who is unambiguously attracted to another man, and who is portrayed sympathetically, was VERY progressive.
• Faux Symbolism: Maria or René implies Gruber isn't interested in her but what they brought: and they pull out the sausage...
• Germans Love David Hasselhoff: Although the series was extremely popular in Britain and overseas, it was especially so in Portugal. According to this article, it was because the series was seen as a parody of war movies which put every one, villains and heroes, the good and the bad, as equally incompetent (and not specifically of Secret Army), at the same time as using a revue-style kind of humour (revue being at the time very popular in Portugal, albeit slowly going out of style with other TV series which were contemporaneous with 'Allo 'Allo! on Portuguese telly). In fact, when Gorden Kaye had his car accident, it was front page news in Portugal, and a BBC spokesperson was reportedly surprised by the number of Portuguese journalists calling in to inquire about Kaye's condition!
• Good Bad Translation: The Polish translation most Poles are familiar with has "Nighthawk" rendered literally as "nocny jastrząb", instead of the correct name of the bird, "lelek". While the correct translation is, well, correct, it a) loses the bombasticness of the original, which was funny, and b) refers to a fairly rare bird most people don't think of in connection with anything in particular. The newer, more correct translation is less funny because of that.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: Womanizing René is usually appalled whenever he sees that Lt. Gruber is hitting on him. In the mid 80's Gorden Kaye admitted that he is, in fact, homosexual. (And Guy Siner is not).
• Moe: You would never expect a Wehrmacht member to be this, but Gruber proves you wrong for being a kind and soft-spoken fellow.
• Older Than They Think: The Six Dates with Barker episode "1915: Lola" (aired early 1971) is tonally very similar to the series; both take place in Nazi-occupied France, both have their characters use silly broad accents to define what foreign language is being spoken, and at one point, "1915: Lola" has a plot point about a secret message hidden in a sausage, which became a running gag in 'Allo 'Allo! where various MacGuffins (most often valuable paintings) would be stashed away in knockwurst sausages.
• Parody Displacement: The series was conceived not as a comedy about La Résistance but as a parody of British dramas about them, specifically the BBC's 1977-79 Secret Army, which was popular enough to have its own sequel, Kessler. However, Secret Army ran for only three series and has been largely forgotten, whereas 'Allo 'Allo! lasted for ten years.
• Retroactive Recognition:
  • Klein from "Savile Row to the Rescue" is played by John Bluthal, who would later be best known for playing Frank Pickle in The Vicar of Dibley.
  • Four guest roles from between 1987 and 1988 are played by Owen Brenman, who would later be best known for playing Nick Swainey in One Foot in the Grave.
• The Woobie: Von Smallhausen and especially Lt. Gruber despite them being Nazis too.
• Woolseyism: The German dub translated Officer Crabtree's Character Catchphrase of "Good moaning" to "Good stomach".

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