Black Adder

1 9 8 3 - 1 9 8 9 (UK)
The Black Adder : 6 x 35 minute episodes
Blackadder II : 6 x 30 minute episodes
Blackadder the Third : 6 x 30 minute episodes
Blackadder Goes Forth: 6 x 30 minute episodes

Blackadder has been one of the most successful comedies ever shown on the BBC. It was written initially by Richard Curtis (of Four Weddings and a Funeral fame) and Rowan Atkinson, and subsequently by Curtis and Ben Elton (best known for his work on The Young Ones). The script was superbly scathing and ludicrously humorous. EG: "You twist and turn like a twisty-turny thing. I say you're a weedy pigeon and you can call me Susan if it isn't so". The saga follows the life of Prince Edmund, The Black Adder, and a selection of his descendants.

The first series is set at the end of the fifteenth century and introduces the characters, serving as a useful introduction to the Blackadder dynasty. The premise is that Richard III didn't murder the princes in the tower and one of them grew up to be Richard, Duke of York, heir to the throne. Henry VII didn't win the battle of Bosworth Field in 1485, it was won by Richard who went on to become Richard IV. 

When Henry VII came to the throne 13 years later he changed to the Gregorian calendar, put the date back 13 years and destroyed all traces of the reign of Richard IV - all but one document, that is, recording the exploits of Richard IV's younger son, Edmund, Duke of Edinburgh, who styled himself 'The Black Adder'. 

Edmund was decidedly hard-of-thinking but still much sharper than his two cohorts, Baldrick and Percy. Together they schemed for an easier life, a better position and perhaps even a shot at the throne itself. But all of these ambitions were doomed to failure by the sheer incompetence of the three protagonists, who managed to combine their monumental stupidity with laziness and overwhelming cowardice. The series struck a chord with many younger viewers and won an international Emmy in the popular arts category in 1983, enough (just) to convince the BBC to commission a second series.

The second series follows the fortunes of a young Lord during Elizabethan times. The flawed genes of the Blackadder family have resurfaced in the melting pot of history, giving us another  Edmund, the bastard great, great grandson of the original Black Adder. Now with Blackadder as an established surname, this latest Edmund is markedly different from the first. As greedy, indolent and cowardly as his ancestor, this Blackadder has brains and cunning aplenty. Tudor England proved to be a dangerous time for the scheming Edmund, especially with a childlike and selfish Queen who could turn instantly from being enamoured with her subject to wanting him beheaded. Elsewhere, he had an enemy in the court, Lord Melchett, a favourite with the Queen. Melchett regarded Edmund as a transparent yet still dangerous rival. By Blackadder's side was another Baldrick, whose family seemed compelled to produce sub-human specimens destined to serve the dastardly Blackadders.

Blackadder II nearly didn't happen, the cost of the first series deterring BBC executive Michael Grade from permitting a second. But major changes to the series were afoot: Atkinson realized that the location scenes got in the way of the comedy, and that by filming nearly everything in a studio, with an audience, they could cut costs and heighten the humour. 

Atkinson stepped down from writing duties and Ben Elton was brought in to work with Curtis on the scripts. He was an inspired choice, bringing to the production quick fire dialogue, rich verbal weaponry and a fitting dose of vulgarity. Atkinson was in his element as the sneering, superior Edmund, a cold and calculating man surrounded by fools. The new-style dialogue particularly suited him, his character revelling in wonderfully convoluted insults such as, "Your brain is like the four-headed man-eating haddock-fish beast of Aberdeen. It doesn't exist".

The third Blackadder series chronicles the life of the butler to the Prince of Wales during the late 1700s. The Prince Regent is a man of severely limited intellect and foppish habits, while once again, this Blackadder has a stinging wit and a cowardly cunning, and (once again) is aided, abetted and hindered by a virtually brain-dead member of the Baldrick family. Here we find a Blackadder no longer a member of the aristocracy but still ambitious to better himself by foul means. His demeaning position, in service to a man with a "brain the size of a peanut" only strengthens his resolve to move up in the world.

The fourth and final Blackadder series tells of Captain Blackadder - a career soldier who enlisted to escape the rigors of civilian life and who has enjoyed an action-free existence across three continents. He's a man of simple ambitions: an easy life, the occasional drink and promotion to an even safer, higher-paid position. Unfortunately, the Great War has interfered with his plans and he has found himself stuck in the trenches, uncomfortably close to the front.

With him, as always, is a prize idiot from the Baldrick clan - this time a particularly unpleasant army private, serving as Blackadder's batman. Also entrenched, as it were, is Lieutenant George St Barleigh, a keen, vacuous type anxious to volunteer for all sorts of loony escapades and devoted to Captain Blackadder. Their very lives are in the hands of General Melchett, a direct conduit to General Haig, who delivers the plans and orders that dictate their movements. 

Melchett is quite mad - a gung-ho, bloodthirsty armchair warrior from a military family - and is assisted by an aide-de-camp, the sycophantic Captain Darling. Blackadder's main concern is how to dissuade Melchett from sending him and his men to certain death. 

Blackadder ultimately snuffs it during 'Operation Certain Death' in No Man's Land  during WWI in the Blackadder Goes Forth series. This grim image, the frame frozen and then dissolving into one depicting the same field full of poppies, memorably ended the series on a note of dark satire and was a fitting conclusion to a comedy premise that had always sported an underlying intelligence beneath its farcical surface.

TRIVIA NOTE
A one-off edition of the series was made for showing in the Millennium Dome at the turn of the century. A new 21st century Blackadder has built a spoof time machine with which he plans to trick his friends on millennium new years eve. The plan backfires when the time machine actually works!