Now we've had three
previous incarnations,
...and this time he comes
fo(u)rth to the th century,
...and the trenches of
the First World w*r.
So while you have a look at
the making of the program,
I shall go off scouting around
the corridors of Television Centre.
Rotters.
OK opening titles...
Two, one...
I think Baldrick has got
stupider and stupider...
...as the centuries have gone on.
In the first series he was actually
the brightest out of Baldrick and...
...out of Baldrick, Percy,
and Blackadder.
And then he got a bit stupider,
and now, he's terminally stupid.
It's impossible to see how he
actually gets through a day.
Hugh, just remember to
look the other way, OK?
Five, four, three...
I don't find it terribly
difficult to be stupid.
I spy with my little eye
something beginning with...
...M.
Uuhhmmm...
Mmm...
Ma... ma...
Mug!
Oh I say, sir.
We wanted a place and a time that
could reproduce to a certain extent
...the claustrophobia, and the
sordidness of medieval England.
And the best way to do that
is to set it in the middle of a w*r.
It seemed the perfect place
for the kind of plots...
...that we like in The Black Adder
where the Black Adder thinks...
...that he's going to get out of
trouble by doing a cunning plan,
...and then gets into more so.
Good sitcoms, so the
com wisdom guys,
set in places were you can't get out.
Porridge in prison, Fawlty Towers...
Basil's trapped with a ghastly wife
that he can't escape from,
and a business which is oviously going
bust but which is his only livelihood.
And we've set ours in a trench dug out
and there is only two ways to escape,
one is forward to the
German machine g*ns,
the other's backwards to
the British f*ring squads.
Uhm, yeah...
The producer is basically a man
who has no talent whatsoever.
Except the talent to criticize
everyone else's talent.
I hate to raise this, I mean we
worked on it for three hours,
but do you think it's a very good joke?
These orders Hugh's suggested?
This has nothing to do with me.
- It was. - It was nothing to do
with me, I just wrote it out.
It's a good joke.
- It's alright, it's good, it's good.
All it was was that the pilau
sketch wasn't quite good, so...
Because right at the end of the word
An order for six lengths of Hungarian
crushed velvet curtain material.
- ...curtain material, that's good.
- You know, that's something...
Six lengths of Hungarian
crushed velvet...
...curtain material.
in seresin banana.
We don't do any rehearsals
like actors are supposed to do.
Going over the thing again and again
and again learning your words.
All we do is argue about
the best way of doing it.
I'm still labouring
under the belief...
that no-one ever ordered anything
by the phone in . I ...
It's true, it wasn't that
kind of country, was it?
- It was not a telephone ordering
country. - Certainly not pilau rice.
The rehearsal process is a big chunk
of what makes Blackadder funny,
...I think, because...
we have a business called tweaking
or sometimes known as plumpening.
If someone says, you know,
"I'm going to...
...the general" and somebody else
has the line "Why?", and then,
let's say Blackadder has a reply,
will attempt to pep up "why", say, you
know, odds 'n bods, "I'm as confused
as a man who's had his head cut off,
and put on the wrong way round.
I have to say that the
writers are saintly men,
and who put up with an awful
lot of brutality. Richard's...
Richards Curtis' constant cry to me is,
"You wouldn't do this to Shakespeare".
And I said, I think I would. I think
a lot of those plays are far too long.
No hang on-hang on, there's
something wro... wrong here.
Because surely if you're ordering
a cab for a mr. Redgrave...
Oh, from Arnos Grove, in that case, it
should be rather than to Arnos Grove.
I thought it was mr. Redgrave
who was ordering the cab.
But in fact,
what you're saying is that mr. Redgrave
expertise on the top bout
- Crazy Rowan and logic.
- No that's fine, just change it to .
Who are we getting
to play the cab driver?
The hardest thing about writing
Blackadder is in the end, you know,
when you love a joke and
when the cast don't love it,
and you have to argue a way around.
But the, the highest hope is that
eventually you'll come up together
with a line that they like and you
like more than the one you wrote.
On the contrary George, we've had
plenty of orders. We've had orders for:
Six meters of Hungarian crushed
velvet curtain material...
pilau rice...
- And chicken massala. - pilau
rice and chi-chicken massala.
And a cab...
...for a mr. Redgrave, picking up
from on Osgrove, ring top bell.
The rehearsal process certainly
is a wonderful therapy,
because you can laugh yourself sick
for forty minutes on end helplessly.
Come and join me Stephen,
come on, come over here.
It's very difficult to sit next to
Baldrick because he's so smelly.
This is Stephen Fry,
who plays general Melchett.
Who is a complete
utter vicious duffer.
Ooh, now, you're just
going to be lovely.
It's not true, it's not
true, it's not true.
I'm really rather awful.
Speckly? Aaah!
You sh*t my Speckled Jim?!
I've never played him quite so mad
before, the previous Melchett,
I played in Blackadder II
was rather sort of grave.
And uh... quite,
quite good, really.
Grey, I suspect, majesty.
I think you'll find it was
orange, lord Melchett.
Grey is more usual, ma'am.
Who's queen?
As you say, your majesty.
There were these magnificent
orange elephants...
Whereas this chap is blustering and
really quite seriously deranged.
He sh*t my pidgeon!
Blackadder always seems to work
best in times of absolute madness.
When the whole world is mad,
and it's as though Rowan's character
is the only sane person. And I don't
think there are many times in history
that were madder than the period
around the First World w*r.
springs to mind in Britain, I
don't know why, why am I saying that.
Early ' ...
- Early ' , yes, that's right.
I spy with my little eye
something beginning with R.
Army!
For god's sake Baldrick,
"army" starts with an A.
He's talking about something
that starts with an R, "rrr".
- Motorbike!
- What?
Motorbike starts with a 'RRR'.
RRRRRRR!
- Right!
Right, my turn again, what starts
with "come here" and ends with "ow"?
- Don't know.
- Come here.
- Ow!
Sure. OK. Fine. Great.
Time for some poolside gossip.
This is what I found out this week:
Well, Rowan Atkinson's ambition
was to be a cameraman.
He originally applied to the BBC to
be an engineer, and was turned down.
Tony Robinson really wanted
to be a romantic hero.
He'd like to play Romeo
to Victoria Woods' Juliet.
Or vice versa.
Alexei Sayle whose "Staff" starts on
Thursday is a closet ballet dancer.
He goes to a gym for dance classes,
but won't go to a dance studio,
...as he can't cope with the idea
of wearing pink leg warmers.
And Michael Palin, while he was trying
to go around the world in eighty days,
...which starred on BBC last Wednesday,
he was spotted in Cairo,
and ended up with a small walk-on
part in an Egyptian gangster movie.
Bizarre, hey? Well that's
all for this week.
Tune in next week,
when we'll be looking...
at a new drama serial starring Diana
Rigg, and I'll be in the bath.
So, cheers!