Only one cast member featured in both the movie and the TV series, and that was Gary Burgough as Radar. The series wasn’t an instant success, but it grew on people as time went on. Starting as a straight comedy, some seriousness was injected in the second season with Sometimes you hear the bullet. This is what I liked about the series – it did both comedy and drama and it was well balanced. So well balanced that any issues with cast changes were quickly overcome. That was tested when Maclean Stevenson (Henry Blake) left, and then Wayne Rogers (John “Trapper” McIntyre) quickly followed in controversial circumstances that Wayne now regrets. I’m sure Mike Farrell (BJ Hunnicutt) wasn’t complaining! Same for Harry Morgan (Sherman Potter).

When Larry Linville (Frank Burns) departed, the arrival of David Ogden-Stiers (Charles Emerson-Winchester III) provided a wonderful chance for wit. That was the beauty of this series – the ability to adapt. Small wonder the series lasted 11 seasons, when the Korean War only went for 3 years (notwithstanding what’s been happening more recently in North Korea!).

The final episode – the movie length Goodbye, Farewell and Amen drew the biggest audience in American TV History in 1983, a record that still stands today in percentage terms even though in pure numbers Superbowl 44 pipped it in 2010 by just half a million people. A note of trivia, this was not the final story produced. That honour goes to the penultimate story, As Time Goes By, and the final scene was at the time capsule. The final line before the director yelled, “That’s a wrap!” was Hawkeye saying to Margaret, “Well, we’re burying everything else I figured why not the hatchet.”