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McHale's Navy (1962-1966)

Ernest Borgnine in McHale's Navy
This wacky military service comedy series was set in the Pacific theatre of World War II—for the last season the setting changed to the European theater in Italy—and focused on the loony misfit crew of PT-73, wily boys with crazy antics, led by Lieutenant Commander Quinton McHale, played by Borgnine.

The producer, Edward J. Montagne, had enjoyed success with The Phil Silvers Show (1955-1959), a military comedy about an opportunistic noncommissioned officer and his loyal platoon putting loony things over on the camp commander. While the pilot had been dramatic, with overtones of Henry Fonda's introspective Mister Roberts, Montagne turned the "McHale" project into "Bilko in the Navy", and recruited Sgt. Bilko actors and writers. However, unlike The Phil Silvers Show, which was set in peacetime, McHale's Navy was set during World War II, although much of what takes place is, in some ways, as if it were peacetime with the crew permanently stationed in one location and concerns about peacetime duties rather than fighting a war.

If Borgnine had misgivings about the show's new direction, he hid them and played straight-man to the comedians around him. At the time of the series, then-President John F. Kennedy was known as the wartime commander of PT-109. A popular book, PT 109: John F. Kennedy in WWII by Robert J. Donovan came out the previous year, and PT-109 was sometimes slyly referenced in a few episodes relating to a young commissioned PT boat officer.

Plot
The basic plot revolves around McHale's crew's wacky schemes to make money, get girls, and have a ball, and the efforts of Captain Binghamton (McHale's superior) to rid himself of the PT-73 crew for good, either by transfer or court martial. Although they are forever getting into trouble, they (almost always unwittingly) get out of trouble. Despite their scheming, conniving, and often lazy and unmilitary ways, McHale's crew is always successful in combat in the end. This bears close resemblance to the British radio programme The Navy Lark, broadcast around the same period. The entire show is based on only two locations, one in the South Pacific at a fictional base called Taratupa - the inferred location (first episode) are islands south of New Zealand and an equally fictional town in Italy called Voltafiore. The first few episodes merely indicate it is "somewhere in the South Pacific 1943". While in the South Pacific, McHale's crew lives on "McHale's Island", which is described as across the bay from Taratupa. It keeps them away from the main base, where they are free to carry out their antics and even fight the war. In the final season, Binghamton and the entire PT-73 crew move to the liberated Italian theater to the town of Voltafiore "in Southern Italy" "in late 1944".