The events occur post-Dunkirk, placing it after 26 May - 4 June 1940.
Studio rehearsals began in Rehearsal Room 101, North Action, on September 1, 1982. The pilot's interior scenes were recorded in front of an audience on Saturday, September 11, 1982, in BBC Television Centere's Studio 3. It was first screened on December 30, 1982 and attracted an audience of 8.1 million. A series of 7 episodes was soon commissioned, but because of David Croft's busy schedule, it was decided that there would be no filming in 1983 at all. Instead, Croft informed the cast in crew in a letter dated March 24, 1983 that location filming for series one would start on April 9, 1984, to last at least three weeks. Studio rehearsals would then begin on May 7th, with the recording four days later, and each subsequent Friday after that, until June 22, 1984.
Although she only worked on the pilot, Shelagh Lawson's design for the Café set the tone for the entire series and was only slightly tweaked by the production designers that took over from her in later series. Lawson had a polystyrene brick window made for the scene in which the Resistance breaks Monsieur Leclerc out of prison. After filming, she took the window home with her and mounted it on her garden wall window, so that every time she looked out of her kitchen window, she faced a prison window.
For the outdoor scenes, including the one in which Monsieur Leclerc breaks out of prison, locations was scouted in Normandy, France, with a trip to France planned between Tuesday, August 24 and Friday, August 27 1982. However, these plans were quickly dropped and the prison escape scene was shot outside Wapping Sports Centre, off Wapping High Street, London, on August 26. The remaining outdoors scenes, such as the two British airmen cycling were filmed between August 24 and 27 around Richmond Arms Hotel, Goodwood, West Sussex.
(At approx. 18:35) Reference is made to Lieutenant Gruber (Guy Siner) being on leave from the Russian Front. Using the real-world timeline, that would make the time frame some time after June 1941, which is when Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union.