Tell me Edmund, have you someone
special in your life?
Well, yes, as a matter of fact,
I do. Who?
Me.
No, I mean, someone you love and
cherish and want to keep safe
from all the horror and the hurt.
Mmm... Still me really.
I was travelling on a plane
several years ago and an
episode of The Blackadder
came up on the
entertainment channels,
and it was the nurse episode from
the fourth series with Miranda,
and, as far as I'm aware, it was an
episode that I had never, ever seen.
Cigarette? No, thank you. I only
smoke cigarettes after making love.
So, back in England,
I'm a -a-day man.
I'm not a great laugher, sadly,
but I might have sniggered at it,
which was my way of saying,
"That was very funny."
Remarkably, Blackadder first
slithered on to our screens
all of years ago.
I'd mud-wrestle my own mother for
a ton of cash, an amusing clock
and a sack of French p*rn.
So tonight, we celebrate the series
that sired a comic generation
and a quantum of quotable lines.
You've really worked out your
banter, haven't you? No, not really.
This is a different thing. It's
spontaneous and it's called wit.
We travel by train, plane,
boat and automobile to track down
the original cast and creators
who'd gone on to conquer
all corners
of the known universe.
Baaah!
If you should falter,
remember that Captain Darling
and I are behind you.
About miles behind you.
We travel from Northumberland...
When we filmed here, it was the first
time I'd ever met a camp Geordie.
..to northern France.
If ever there was a subject
requiring of satire,
it's people blindly going to w*r.
From Hollywood...
There were some rather large egos.
I happen to be perfect,
but everyone else
is just a sort of big-headed twerp.
..to the Horn of Africa.
After Blackadder, I sort of
semi-retired really, and I bought
this small African town, Potendwe,
and the land you can see there,
up until the hills, that's all mine.
Behind is Christopher Biggins',
except the hill further on.
That's the S Club and Boyzone
accountant.
Blackadder, to remind those
from another planet,
followed the exploits of the
devilishly cunning Edmund Blackadder
and his trustily stupid
sidekick, Baldrick.
Baldrick, believe me.
Eternity and the company of Beelzebub
and all his hellish instruments
of death will be a picnic compared to
five minutes with me and this pencil.
The pair journey from the
mayhem of the Middle Ages...
through the terrible Tudors...
to the gorgeous Georgians...
Hurrah!
..ending up in the First World w*r.
MACHINE g*n FIRE
As an historical sitcom, it's
timeless and keeps on twisting
and turning its way into
the public's affections like...
Well, a twisty, turney thing.
And your chosen subject.
Blackadder. Blackadder the TV series.
Blackadder Goes Forth.
It's even the backbone
of school history lessons.
Now who's heard of Blackadder?
I want to be remembered
when I'm dead.
I want books written about me,
I want songs sung about me,
and then, hundreds of years from
now, I want episodes from my life
to be played out weekly at
half-past nine
by some great heroic
actor of the age.
Now, for the first time, Blackadder
himself, Rowan Atkinson,
and producer John Lloyd are
re-tracing the story of the show,
a story that began at Oxford
University, where a young Atkinson
first met the show's
fellow creator, Richard Curtis.
I did nothing of a theatrical nature
in my first term at Oxford.
You know, I was
just relishing the whole,
you know, slightly olde-worlde, you
know, privileged nature of the place,
and going to endless organ recitals.
I was a great lover of the organ.
I met Rowan in a small room -
a don's room in some college
with people who'd answered
an advertisement
for The Etceteras, which was
the Oxford sketch-writing group.
He described me as
being like a cushion,
like a cushion, because I sat
on the chair and said nothing.
I thought he was a stuffed toy.
I mean, he didn't say anything
for the first three meetings,
just a curiously shaped
object in the corner.
And just when we were trying to
decide what the material should be,
and we'd all been handing in
sketches for months,
Rowan actually stood up and did two
absolutely astonishing sketches.
Endsleigh?
Babcock?
Bland?
I was an enormous
admirer of Rowan Atkinson.
I'd seen him in Edinburgh where
he'd been a cult performer
from his earliest performances.
Nancy-Boy Potter?
Nibble?
'And I don't remember ever
having laughed so much.'
I genuinely weed myself
at one point.
Just a small amount, you'll
be pleased to know,
but I did wee myself
at Rowan's schoolmaster monologue.
Nibble! Leave Orifice alone.
Not The Nine O'Clock News, the show
that brought alternative comedy
to TV, was the next step
for Rowan and Richard.
It was while working together on
the ground-breaking sketch show
that the idea for Blackadder started
to take shape,
and they made a pilot
that's never been seen till now.
Then there's the Morris dancers.
We're not having them.
Morris dancing is the most
despicable entertainment
I've ever seen.
A load of effeminate blacksmiths
waving bits of white cloth
they've been wiping their noses on.
It's a positive health hazard.
KNOCK ON DOOR
Go away!
The thing we really didn't want
to do was anything that could,
in any sense, be compared
to Fawlty Towers.
That was...that was almost
the starting point.
There's one thing you mustn't be,
Fawlty Towers, or anything like it.
And of course the great inspiration
on the other side of it,
the thing we DID want it to be quite
like was Errol Flynn's Robin Hood.
The pilot turned
into the first series,
featuring a Blackadder
very different
from the brilliant bounder
we came to know.
What a little turd!
It was a grand affair,
set in the Middle Ages
at the stately
Alnwick Castle in Northumberland.
Well, so, years ago,
we found ourselves coming to
this town for the first time.
Oh, look, there's a bit of castle,
there's the sort of gate.
I'm sure, when we came on
the recce, we thought,
oh, no, this is really
disappointing.
Is that it? Just that gate. Yeah.
Oh, dear, that's a bit squat.
Oh, my God, there it is.
Now this does ring bells. Yes.
Although I have to say the whole feel
is an awful lot more spruce.
It's a lot... It's very trim,
isn't it? It wasn't like this.
I mean, look at that grass.
You know, there are lots of castles
in, you know, Kent or somewhere
which just don't have this sense of
openness and bleakness
which Alnwick has,
particularly in the snow in February.
All I can remember is thinking,
"Look at all this stuff..."
This place would have
been full of people,
as far as the eye could see.
Horses and dogs...
This is where the
first sh*t we sh*t begins,
as you say goodbye to Baldrick.
And I remember the fantastic
sound of hooves on these stones,
on this stone inside this tunnel.
And I remember, when you were
on that horse that first day,
you leaned down from the horse
and there was a little dewdrop
hanging off the end of your nose
because it was so cold.
Oh, yes, yes. The raindrop there,
and then you said,
"What voice shall I use?"
Help! Help! We haven't thought
about this at all.
Get out of my way!
Are you going on a journey, my lord?
No, I thought I'd stand
here all day and talk to you.
Well, you'll be needing
someone to tend your horse then.
What is your profession?
One two three, one two three!
My God, a retired Morris dancer.
I found this the other day. I
actually kept a diary of a few days.
" th February .
"Filming has been
fantastically slow and tedious.
"The snow comes down on
the words 'turn over'
"as if summoned by an incantation
and a remarkable variety
of textures.
"Often it's as big as gravel stones,
"and the flagstones look like a
working model of Brownian motion."
Oh, that's rather...
Some lyrical writing!
Very well written. Thank you so much!
Rather better than the series!
"On Monday, Tuesday,
worried dreadfully that
"Rowan's character was a disaster,
but it seems to be gelling well."
Oh, oh. It's gelled.
"Tim McInnerny is brilliant,
as is Tony Robinson,
"quite splendid juices being
squeezed from a rather
shrivelled selection of lemons."
What comes in my head first
about series one
is freezing to
death in Alnwick Castle.
I can remember on the very
first day, Tim McInnerny and I
started to get the giggles
because in the previous hour,
we'd been subjected to five different
kinds of snow.
It was everything the
north-east had to throw at us.
"The hailstones are as fat
as Mint Imperials
"and it's so cold, we have to
wear our long-johns in the bath."
Despite its quite graphic description
of the difficult conditions,
actually, the
tone is quite optimistic.
I mean, you don't sound like a
man about to jump off a cliff.
What used to be strong about
British comedy
was that people
went from writing sketches
to writing a sitcom, and their
sketchcraft was carried through.
Let's get down to business,
shall we? Business, my lord?
Yes. Baldrick has been looking at
some of the ways we can actually
make a bit of money at this job.
Some of the things that are best
in series one are really sketches.
There appear to be
four major profit areas.
Curses, pardons, relics and selling
the sexual favours of the nuns.
Selling the sexual favours of nuns?
Yeah. You mean some
people actually pay for them?
Well, foreign
businessmen, other nuns...
'We weren't an ensemble
at that time'
and, in a way, for me, I think,
that scene was the first time
that it really gelled.
Moving on to relics, we've got
shrouds from Turin.
Wine from the wedding at Cana.
Splinters from the Cross.
And of course, there's all the stuff
made by Jesus in his
days in the carpentry shop.
We've got pipe racks,
coffee-tables, coat stands.
Waterproof sandals.
That's what I remember.
This was my one good scene in
the first Blackadder series.
'I was so pleased I got this.'
I haven't finished this one yet.
It's so verbal, isn't it?
Nice props,
I'm not knocking them at all,
but just the three of us
being serious and pulling faces.
'Absolutely.'
I have here a true relic.
What is it?
It is a bone
from the finger of our Lord.
It cost me pieces of silver.
'Baldrick, you stand amazed.'
I am. I thought they
only came in boxes of .
'Look at you!'
You should be sh*t for
that kind of acting.
No, I could have been much worse.
I remember Blackadder
being lots of fun.
In the end, you are about as much
use to me as a hole in the head -
an affliction with which
you must be familiar,
having never actually had a brain.
Hello!
The Spanish Infanta
didn't know she was ugly.
That's the
sad thing, really, about it.
Here I am, awaiting the arrival
of the most beautiful, ravishing...
Hello!
Leave me alone, will you?
I'm trying to talk to someone.
..while you're wittering away like
a pox-ridden moorhen.
SHE SPEAKS SPANISH
She loved Blackadder, and she was
electrified, sexually, by him.
SHE SPEAKS SPANISH
I've waited for this
moment all of my life
SHE SPEAKS SPANISH
Your nose is smaller
than I expected.
For him, it was tough.
He felt a huge responsibility,
kind of carrying the show.
It's extraordinary, the physical
difference with Rowan,
between the
first and second series. Yeah.
Do your funny walk then, Adder.
Moi? Do the funny Blackadder walk.
I haven't got a
funny Blackadder walk.
You did one like that!
'Or something weaselly.'
What seems odd now is that
Tony was the streetwise, smart guy,
and Rowan was an idiot.
Incredibly dysfunctional,
almost twisted person.
A bit like what Mr Bean became.
Rowan wasn't entirely relaxed
in the first series,
as were none of us,
because we weren't quite sure...
not quite sure
what we were doing.
Rowan's character wasn't properly
sorted out.
Oh, my God, this is impossible!
I can't do this.
We tried to do too much with
Rowan's character in series one,
cos he was sort of aggressive and
stupid and posh and cowardly
and brave,
so it was a sort of agglomeration
of quite a few funny things
that we knew Rowan could do.
But it's interesting how, you know,
an amusing costume and a daft haircut
an amusing character doth not make!
I sat there wanting to laugh and
unable to, a lot of the time.
I did laugh quite a lot, but I
hope desperately that I shall
laugh more the next week.
What exactly is funny about this?
What is funny about having
that character?
Farewell, sweet England,
and noble castle!
First watering place in the desert
of my life.
Farewell, gentle giblets
and sweet crenellations,
and farewell, dearest gutters!
I remember that famous
comment of yours.
It looks like a million dollars but
it cost a million pounds.
I suppose a good thing about the
modern BBC is that they would
never have allowed us to do this.
You know, to do what we did.
I mean, you know, they would never,
you know, have just let
a few young, you know, creative
people come up to Alnwick and sh**t.
Well, no, they wouldn't, but then,
on the other hand,
we were very
proud of it at the time we did it.
The basic fault is the script,
because Rowan Atkinson
and this chap who he writes with,
have written an awful lot,
and it seems that six episodes
are too much for them.
There are a lot of half-employed
script writers who could have been
brought in to good effect.
There was in fact a slightly more
than half-employed scriptwriter
knocking about.
Ben Elton was behind the
cult series of The Young Ones
and was brought in to hone
the writing of the second series.
Is the sitcom written?
I mean, not the sitcom,
the drama, the comedy. Well...
That sounds like a good idea.
I'm working on a pilot,
I'm working on a pilot episode.
I've now had a screening council,
and the end is hard to get right,
and I don't know how to
get the special effects right.
I think we met at a script meeting
for what was going to turn
into Spitting Image,
and I was startled to find
a huge fan of Blackadder I.
These were before the days of
ratings. That was always the shock.
I mean, I still don't know how many
people watched any episode of
Blackadder.
And I remember on BBC...
Well, I used to wander round
Shepherd's Bush
looking at people's windows,
particularly people with basement
flats, to see whether or not
anyone was watching.
You were looking for any nude girls
who'd left their windows...
No, I was looking to see
if anyone was watching Blackadder.
One didn't know whether
it would be a success.
I wondered who that kind of
ginger perv was whilst Kate and
I were singing the theme tune.
'He lived rough.
'He talked rough.
'He wore a ruff.
'Blackadder II.
'Coming soon.
'Ish.'
They would sit in different rooms,
probably even in different houses,
having divided the series
into two halves,
and they'd write three
episodes each and then swap over.
It always led you somewhere else.
OK, execution,
head cut off, how's
he gonna get out of it?
Stick the head down
the back of his tights. Obvious!
'But maybe not obvious to the person
who started with the beheading.'
Oh, Percy!
I've got the body, my lord,
and I see you've got the head.
Yes, but it's no good, Percy.
No-one's ever gonna believe we've
just cut it off. It's gone green!
Ben and I never wrote together,
mainly because we had better
things to do with our time.
We were both completely obsessed
by pop music.
Madness, very great era for Madonna.
I seem to remember endless meetings
when all we talked about
was which was our
favourite track on True Blue.
And I remember us going to see
Kylie Minogue, and we were
literally the only two men there.
It was very early on in her career,
and the entire audience was made up
of -year-old women who watched
Neighbours and their daughters,
who also watched Neighbours,
and were, by the time Kylie came on,
fast asleep.
However enjoyable the writing
process and however well the scripts
were shaping up,
Ben and Richard were less than
lucky, lucky, lucky
to get an ominous letter from
the BBC's head of comedy.
Michael Grade had come in,
and he looked at the ratings,
and it doesn't stack up.
It's not good enough for the little
ratings they're getting,
and it doesn't get
enough good reviews. It's finished.
And I remember
the sentence very clearly.
"For this season, and
realistically that means for good.
"Very sorry about this. It's over."
At which point,
a combination really of John Lloyd,
Rowan Atkinson and Rowan's agent,
Richard Armitage, at the time,
went into overdrive.
There was this mad weekend where
Richard, Ben and I were sitting
at three typewriters, desperately
cutting up out all the film,
taking up anything that had
a silly costume,
that was at all expensive,
and we went back, I went back
two days later,
the beginning of the next week, to
John Davies, and said, "Here you are.
"These are the cheapest
sitcoms on telly, and please
may we have another chance?"
The key element to the success
of the second series though,
would be the transformation of
Blackadder himself
from nerdy medieval prince
of series one
to suave Elizabethan courtier.
The very first lesson was to pick
Rowan's character,
to get it exactly clear
what it was he was gonna do,
and, as Ben says, there was
a whole imperious, sarcastic,
posh side of Rowan
which we both loved,
which we knew how to write, which
came very naturally to both of us.
Tell me, young crone. Is this Putney?
Indeed. That it be.
Yes it is, not "that it be".
You don't have to talk in that stupid
voice to me, I'm not a tourist.
It's lovely to have this sort of
pecking order, and to place
Blackadder somewhere in it,
somewhere in the middle,
so he can be very cynical
about those above him,
and very cynical about those
below him.
Oh, very good sh*t, my lord.
Thank you, Baldrick.
Sorry I'm late.
No, don't bother apologising.
I'm sorry you're alive.
'There's a thing about
comedy in Britain.
'Britain's a terrible place
for class, as everybody knows.'
You look at a...
I don't know, a sitcom.
The moment the lights go up, as it
were, and you think, "Oh, God, it's
upper-class people.
"I don't care about them."
Or, "Oh, God, it's middle-class
dentists, I don't care about them."
Or, "Oh, God, it's wacky Scousers,
I don't care about them."
You know what I mean?
Everybody seems to hate everybody
else in Britain and thinks up a
reason not to care about them.
And one of the marvellous things
about Blackadder II
and the subsequent Blackadders is
that they are set in a very rigidly
hierarchical world.
My Lord. The Queen does demand your
urgent presence on pain of death.
Oh, damn. The path of my life
is strewn with cowpats
from the devil's own satanic herd.
You've got real thr*at.
Blackadder is going to have his
head chopped off at any moment.
It's perfectly possible.
This mad, capricious queen really
could say, "This time I mean it."
Ooh, Edmund.
I do love it when you get cross.
Sometimes I think about having
you ex*cuted just to see the
expression on your face.
It's within court,
which is a very
small, bejewelled world, you know.
There are these little people
in there,
who think they rule the world,
and of course it was only me
that ruled the world.
What is it? A stick.
Is it a stick, Lord Blackadder?
Yes, Ma'am. But it is a very
special stick,
because, when you
throw it away, it comes back!
Oh, well!
That's no good, is it?
Because, when I throw things away,
I don't want them to come back!
You! Get rid of it.
'Richard and Ben had created
this idea, which was the Queen
'was like, a little girl with
an enormous amount of power.'
I think we interviewed
actresses,
and we really were beginning
to get desperate.
It was probably written in a
pretty two-dimensional way,
and they all just were
playing girls from Bedales.
The st person who walked in,
when we were really about
to sh**t ourselves,
was this blonde who
clearly hadn't washed her hair.
Apparently I walked in like
something that had been pulled
through a hedge backwards.
Spot the difference!
Here was this astonishing actress
who did nothing like we expected it.
Every line was odd,
peculiar, weirdly pitched.
I may have the body
of a weak and feeble woman.
But I have the heart and stomach...
..of a concrete elephant.
Prove it! Certainly will.
First I'm going to have
a little drinkie,
and then I'm going to execute
the whole bally lot of you.
Unbeknown to most
people, and Miranda,
in a secret corner of the BBC,
where few dare to tread,
there's the forgotten
costumes department.
In the bowels of the building.
What has it got in its pockets?
Oh! God!
This looks rather familiar.
Ah!
I hope several
hundred moths don't fly out.
Look at this!
Look at the...
And even the work in the...
in the cuffs.
All these little individual
pearls, most of them
still there, just bobbling away.
I remember the weight.
Bloody hell! Yes, that dear friend,
as I remembered. And not only...
Not only the dress, not only
the wig, not only the ruff,
but also a pomander
and a mirror attached to my dress.
Do I look absolutely divine
and regal
and yet and at the same time
very pretty and rather accessible?
You are every jolly jacktar's
dream, Majesty.
I thought as much.
Had we not lucked out
in getting Miranda,
probably Blackadder II
wouldn't have worked. Yeah!
I think it's held
together rather well.
Rather better than I have!
Even though in theory I had
the title role of the programme,
because there was Stephen Fry and
Hugh Laurie and Tony Robinson,
there was this wonderful feeling of
being able to delegate,
of almost being the man in
the middle, who was able to say,
"Ladies and gentlemen, Tony Robinson
will now be extremely amusing!"
Baldrick, I would advise you to make
the explanation you're about to give
phenomenally good.
You said, "Get the door."
Not good enough, you're fired.
But, my lord, I've been
in your family since .
So has syphilis. Now get out.
Ladies and gentlemen, Mr Stephen Fry!
Now, Melchy,
you really are a beginner.
You're not even wearing
a pair of comedy breasts.
Au contraire, Blackadder.
You silly, silly people!
To have come all the way to Ndigwe
with a pair of comedy breasts.
Well, down the hatch.
CHEERING
They still smell the same.
They're fantastic.
I always felt sorry for those
who came into the Blackadder to,
you know, do their roles,
you know, do their cameos.
It's me!
Some people managed it
better than others.
Flash by name, flash by nature!
Come here, camera.
Come here. Come here.
Hello, girls. It's Rik.
Happy Christmas.
Wahay!
Hooray! Where have you been?
Where haven't I been? Woof!
I was surprised when they asked me.
Very honouring they should ask me.
I said, "All right, so long as I get
more laughs than Rowan."
So my old mate
Eddie's getting hitched, eh?
What's are the matter? Can't
stand the pace of the in-crowd?
Many actors have many facets.
I do... I can do ego...
And that's about it.
Am I pleased to see you or did I
just put a canoe in my pocket?
Down, boy, down!
I've got a big one. It's a big one.
But Flashheart isn't
really you, is it?
I mean, it's... No, my ego.
Who is that?
I don't know but he's in your place.
Not for long!
It really helped, somebody coming
in with a different style,
shall we say! Which gave everybody a
bit of a kick up the arse, I think.
There was a very good head-butt.
I'm rather proud of that one.
I head-butt him through the door.
Look, I only took the part
of Flashheart for the women.
Hi, Queenie. You look sexy. Woof!
Woof!
He's like Errol Flynn coming in,
you know, and she's, she's obsessed.
I've got such a crush on him!
He's just bigger and louder
and got more testosterone.
Still worshipping God?
Fancier tights.
Last thing I heard,
he started worshipping me!
Ah ha ha ha ha! Ah ha ha ha ha!
To be standing next to Rowan
is quite an experience.
My fiancee, Kate.
Hi, baby!
'You see then that Rowan
is also a great reactor.'
FRANTIC GRUNTING
And at the end of it, Rik said,
"Did I win?"
Which isn't really in the spirit of
the ensemble, is it?
I don't know. Of course
I haven't counted,
but I got three-and-a-half rounds
of applause and he didn't get one.
Hurrah!
Series two was a brilliant
success so nothing stood in
the way of series three.
The dastardly duo moved
from Elizabethan excess
to the bewigged and perfumed
finery of the th century.
Series three, we took a big old
gamble at the beginning,
that we ended up
with such a small cast,
because there'd been sort of five
of them, hadn't there?
There'd been Melchett and Nursey and
Queenie and Percy and Baldrick
and Rowan, and this time, there was
just Baldrick, Rowan and Hugh.
It was the casting of Prince George
alongside Blackadder and Baldrick
that brought new life to the show.
The role went to an actor
who's since quickened
the pulse of America.
Roaaaarrr!
It's a trial, John, you've no idea.
Have you learned
anything about medicine?
Can you remember all the stuff?
For about minutes.
You know, I can hold it in my head
for about minutes, and I could...
For about minutes,
I could probably
do a coronary bypass operation.
If you catch me at the right hour,
then by all means
have an aortic infarction
at my feet and I'll fix it.
But, if it's the wrong hour,
you're a goner.
I have to say, it's that my
favourite series, Hugh,
that one, and
it's because of you,
and I remember saying to
you on the set that one day,
you are gonna
be such a world-famous actor.
Stop it. I told you. Stop it.
I bet you say that to all the
actors in Blackadder, third series.
Hugh's always self-deprecating
about it,
but that's the kind of bloke he is.
He says, "Oh, I just shouted a lot."
I'm a gay bachelor, Blackadder.
I'm a roarer, a rogerer,
a gorger and a puker.
I can't marry. I'm young,
I'm firm-buttocked, I'm...
Broke.
Well, yes, I suppose so.
You used to get quite stressed
when you were the Prince Regent.
I came pre-stressed.
No stress was added.
I mean, that's what I do.
I don't know why.
I wish I didn't, I wish I could sort
of relax and enjoy things more,
but I don't,
I worry about them.
Just occasionally one can
say, "Come on, Hugh."
Is the entire idea of your misery
for us to spend the next three hours
telling you how great you are?
Because, whether or not that was
the idea, that is the end result!
Prince George is shy and just
pretends to be bluff and
crass and unbelievably thick.
Whilst deep down he is a
soft little marshmallowy,
pigletty type of creature.
But I do love the Prince Regent.
I love his...
His attempt to be
better all the time.
That's one of the things that's
so likeable about him, is,
he's trying to improve himself, and
we know how doomed it is.
'That vacant, panicky look
in his eye. It's bliss.'
I terminated my uninterrupted
categorisation
of the vocabulary of
our post-Norman tongue.
Well, I don't know what you're
talking about,
but it sounds damn saucy,
you lucky thing!
The classic episode of series three
saw the arrival of Robbie Coltrane
as Dr Johnson.
Here it is, sir.
Author of the
very first English dictionary.
This book, sir, contains every
word in our beloved language.
Every single one, sir?
Every single one, sir. Oh.
Well, in that case, sir, I hope you
will not object if I also offer
the doctor my most enthusiastic
contrafibularities.
What?
Contrafibularities, sir.
It is a common word down our way.
Damn!
Oh, I'm sorry, sir.
I'm anaspeptic, frasmotic,
even compunctuous to have
caused you such pericombobulations.
What, what, what?
The funny thing about the dictionary
episode is there are things
in it which I really don't like.
Robbie's wig, which doesn't
fit properly. The poets.
Be quiet, sir!
Can't you see we're dying?
The dream. I suddenly
realised I don't like dreams.
Baldrick! Who gave you
permission to turn into an Alsatian?
Oh, God, it's a dream, isn't it?
It's a bloody dream.
But the fundamental idea of the
plot was a brilliant moment for us.
Baldrick, where's the manuscript?
You mean the big
papery thing tied up with string?
Yes, Baldrick, the manuscript,
belonging to Dr Johnson.
So you're asking where the big
papery thing tied up with string,
belonging to the batey fellow in
the black coat who just left, is?
Yes, Baldrick, I am.
And if you don't answer,
then the booted bony thing with
five toes on the end of my leg
will soon connect sharply
with the soft dangly collection
of objects in your trousers.
I can remember Richard saying,
"I've had a great idea.
"It took Dr Johnson
years to write his dictionary.
"How about he finishes it,
lends it to Blackadder,
"Baldrick puts it on the fire,
Blackadder's got a weekend to
rewrite the dictionary."
Now what about D?
I'm quite pleased with dog.
Yes, and your definition of dog is?
Not a cat.
And I just thought, that is
such a beautiful conceit,
and that's a lot better than writing
three good knob gags,
which is what
I was sort of trying to do.
The dictionary episode was an
appropriate highlight for a series
that revelled in the richness
of the English language,
and was never shy
of a scintillating simile.
He's madder than Mad
Jack McMad, the winner of last year's
Mr Madman competition.
You look as happy as a man who
thought a cat had done its business
on his pie but it turned
out to be an extra big blackberry.
I'm as poor as a church mouse
that's had an enormous tax bill
on the very day his wife ran off with
another mouse taking all the cheese.
A b*rned novel is like a
b*rned dog... Oh, shut up!
The Blackadder scripts are so
revered that all these years later,
the team still pore over the
subtleties of their trade
with fellow literary luminaries,
wherever they can be found.
Do you want it dedicated
to somebody? To Derrick, please.
Thank you. I love Time Team.
You really are a national treasure.
Have you got a favourite quotation?
We used to play the game of
guessing who had written which line.
We were invariably wrong.
Thanks.
When it came to the rehearsals,
and this got more intense
series by series,
everyone became fantastically and
wonderfully greedy.
arguing about the script and
pulling the script to pieces.
There was one where I said,
"I have a message, my lord",
and Rowan said, "That's the
worst message I've ever read",
and we all went, "Urgh",
and it ended up...
"That's the worst message
I've ever heard since..."
..Lord Nelson's famous signal at
the Battle of the Nile,
"England knows Lady Hamilton
"is a virgin, poke my eye out and
cut off my arm if I'm wrong."
People fought for their patch.
Nobody just toed the line and stood
where they were told to stand
and did what they were told to do.
Everyone stood up for
themselves and their characters.
It was very free... Yes.
And creative.
Richard wouldn't have said that.
No, no! "Just read it out" was
Richard's... "Just read it out!"
They would sit around for the
entire time discussing the script.
We'd sometimes say,
"If you stood up and tried to
act this script out,
"you might find out
things about it."
I hate to raise this having worked
on it for three hours
but is it a good joke,
Hugh, since you suggested it?
This was nothing to do with me.
It was!
It was up on the board.
I just read it out.
John and Richard and
Hugh and Stephen
conduct themselves in a very
affable way,
and when they talk
about Blackadder now,
it all seems like it was
a bit jolly,
slightly sticky sometimes,
but basically fine.
I don't remember it quite like that.
It was hard.
Hours would pass and packets of
cigarettes would be got through,
huge quantities of polystyrene
hideous muddy coffee would be drunk
in an effort
to try and get the script right.
Hang on, there's something
wrong here.
Surely if you're ordering a cab
for a Mr Redgrave...
oh, from Arnos Grove?
Sometimes it was very tense, I
remember some difficult times
when we appeared to be just
sitting around for . hours,
bemoaning the lack of writing
clarity in a particular scene
and desperately trying to think how
it might be re-orientated to work.
Just change it to "for".
If you're a young writer
and in with your mates,
and because you've known them
for a long time,
they're going to be able to slag you
off in a way other people
probably won't now
because you're becoming successful.
That's going to be difficult.
I remember this like
a heart att*ck....
That was when I felt the analysis
was getting overblown
and I remember feeling
it was better,
we're now feeling a duty
to open everything up at all times.
I thought it was Mr Redgrave
ordering the cab but in fact
what you're saying is Mr Redgrave
is the person who's going to be
picked up who's on the top bell, yes?
'That's roughly how it
was when it was good.'
And when it wasn't so good,
it wasn't really like that.
It was more strained.
I'm not saying those moments
were rare because they weren't.
They were quite commonplace.
There were lots of longeurs between.
'People sitting
with their heads in their hands.'
And a cab...for a Mr Redgrave,
picking up from Arnos Grove,
ring top bell.
On the back of the third
series, Blackadder was awarded
its own Christmas special,
a parody of Dickens' Christmas Carol
with Ebenezer Blackadder in
very different form.
But the fourth series would take our
comic anti-heroes into a place where
heroes dwell - the First World w*r.
Writer Ben Elton
and producer John Lloyd
have come to the Somme to reflect
on the setting of the final series.
I've always been so interested
in the First World w*r.
Yet I've never been
to the cemeteries.
We've all seen the footage,
many a panning sh*t, as we're doing
now, but until you actually
stand amongst
tens of thousands of crosses, each
with a name on it, it's really...
I had a grandfather fight on either
side. Did you know my German
grandfather got an Iron Cross? No.
Yes, he got an Iron Cross.
Which, actually, is buried in
England because as Jewish refugees,
they escaped
from n*zi Europe...escaped, got out,
my grandad brought his Iron Cross
with him and my grandma,
on discovering it, was horrified.
Here we are, German accents,
Iron Cross,
people might put two and two
together so she buried it
in a garden in Hampstead.
What we discussed back in ' when
we were writing it was not
taking easy laughs at the expense
of such mass heroism.
Coming here today,
I'm very glad we didn't.
By the time we got to Blackadder
Goes Forth, we'd always said that,
more than anything,
we'd like to create a series
that was very claustrophobic
where the five or six of us
who were the performers
were trapped in a space
and what better way to feel that
notion of claustrophobia than in the
trenches in the First World w*r?
Hear the words I sing,
w*r's a horrid thing.
So I sing, sing, sing,
ding-a-ling-a-ling.
It was a peculiar and bold thing
to make a comedy out of,
but ultimately a very
sympathetic and respectful one
even though the characters were
absurd and moronic at times.
It never sort of disrespected
their courage or sacrifice.
I joined up straightaway, sir.
August th, ,
what a day that was.
Myself and the rest of the fellows
leapfrogging down
to the Cambridge recruiting office
and then playing
tiddlywinks in the queue.
We'd hammered Oxford's
tiddlywinkers only the week before
and there we were,
off to hammer the Boche.
And how are the boys now?
Well, Jocko and the Badger bought
it at the first Ypres, unfortunately.
Quite a shock, that.
Those awful policies, of what
were called the Pals Brigades,
because in people joined up
together, whole gangs, the pub would
march to the recruiting station,
a cricket team or the tiddlywinks
team as we said in Blackadder.
They'd all go together and the idea
was they will fight together,
fight for each other and this
industrial w*r didn't have time
for people to fight for each other
because people would be mown down
in an instant.
Gosh, I suppose I'm the only one
of the Trinity Tiddlers still alive.
There's a thought
and not a jolly one.
People don't stop making jokes
because somebody is k*lled
around the corner. In many ways,
life, as people say who've been
fighting in real wars, life becomes
very precious and pumped up.
Baldrick, what are you doing
out there?
I'm carving something
on this b*llet, sir. What?
I'm carving, "Baldrick", sir.
Why? It's a cunning plan, actually.
Of course it is.
You know they say somewhere there's
a b*llet with your name on it?
Yeeeeees.
I thought if I owned the b*llet with
my name on, I'd never get hit by it.
One of the things that strikes me
about that last series
is how isolated all the characters
in it are.
Are you a bit cheesed off, sir?
George, the day this w*r began
I was cheesed off.
Within ten minutes of you turning up,
I'd finished the cheese and moved
on to the coffee and cigars.
The world weariness of Blackadder
was something extraordinary,
something beaten down.
He was not necessary going to win
all the time.
And knew he wasn't, which gave it
a darker edge, I thought.
Baldrick finds his absolute
apotheosis as the Tommy.
He can make the best of everything,
turn things to his advantage,
however ghastly it is.
He can find a better puddle to go to.
I believe Baldrick is the key
to Blackadder and the key
to why it's popular.
He's the common man. We
all identify with this downtrodden
guy who's not respected by anybody,
even when he's supposed be stupid,
Baldrick's analysis of everything
is simple but basically truthful.
Are you looking forward
to the big push?
No, sir, I'm absolutely terrified.
Hmmm, the healthy humour
of the honest Tommy. Ha-ha!
I had the privilege of performing
a part that represented the ordinary
lives of the grandfathers
of an awful lot of people
in the country in which I live.
But really it was for them
to imbue Baldrick with that notion
rather than me.
I was just a bloke
who couldn't make coffee.
Baldrick, fix us some coffee,
will you?
And try to make it taste
slightly less like mud this time.
Not easy, I'm afraid, Captain.
Why is this? Because it IS mud!
In the original script,
Ben had written this line
about Baldrick saying
he'd made the coffee out of mud.
We ran out of coffee months ago.
So every time I've drunk your
coffee since, I have in fact
been drinking hot mud.
And in rehearsals, as was so
often the case, someone said,
"Well, shouldn't there be milk
in the coffee?"
Well, saliva.
And then there should be sugar.
Which is? Dandruff.
And then I know this was Tim
McInnerny, very late in the week,
he suddenly said,
just for us, not cos he thought
it would go in the script, "We
could always make it cappuccino."
BALDRICK SPITS
Here you are, sir.
Ah, cappuccino.
Have you got any of that
brown stuff you sprinkle on the top?
Well, I'm sure I could... No, no.
'In the initial rehearsals,
he wasn't even called Darling.'
He was called Captain Cartwright,
which is kind of dull.
I didn't really know who he was
and couldn't get an angle on him.
I had this bizarre idea that
maybe if there was something
laughable about him, teaseable, and
then it occurred to me maybe a name.
A really silly name.
What's going on, Darling?
Suddenly, this character was born out
of nowhere just cos of the name.
You never mentioned this to me, sir.
Well, we have to have some secrets,
don't we, Darling?
It's such a simple joke,
calling someone Darling,
especially if
he's such a bitter, nasty man.
The way Stephen could
come out, "Oh, Darling."
Get a laugh every single time.
Captain Darling?
Funny name for a guy, isn't it?
Last person I called "darling"
was pregnant seconds later.
Every time his name is mentioned
it's like a Kn*fe in his heart,
twisting.
His hatred and self-loathing
and self-denial is getting
more and more tortured.
Just doing my job, Blackadder.
Obeying orders and of course having
enormous fun into the bargain.
Darling and Blackadder are kind of
the same. They're lower middle-class,
semi-gentlemen.
Obviously one of them has connived
himself onto the staff and the other
one is bad-lucked into the trenches.
You're a damned fine chap,
not a pen-pushing, desk-sucking
blotter-jotter like Darling here.
Eh, Darling? No, sir.
Oh, you're always so good at this.
Oh, yes.
Oddly enough, these feet
aren't the same feet I used to play
General Melchett in Blackadder.
Those were my early feet,
I lost those feet in a card game
to Keith Allen in .
These are my second pair of feet.
Young people playing old people
is very funny.
Because I was in my s and I was
playing a general, it was somehow
funnier than if I'd been the right
age to be a general which I now am.
It had to be a -year-old
playing a -year-old.
If it had been a -year-old
actor it would have been different.
It might have been funny
but in a different way.
It wouldn't have worked
the way Melchett worked.
It's the authority of youth.
Slightly red cheeks
I remember having cos he was
constantly puffing and blowing.
Constantly... I had in my head that
he had piles so when I sat down...
Oh! Like that, these strange noises,
bleats and baas.
Baa! Baa! Baa!
Baa!
Baa! It's an extraordinary gift to
play a character who's afraid of
no-one, who's in supreme command.
It was just wonderfully...
He was seamless.
There was this feeling of an
unstoppable train of a performance.
Who is the judge, by the way? Baa!
I'm dead.
Come on. We'll get this over in five
minutes and have a spot of lunch.
The court is now in session.
General Sir Anthony Cecil
Hogmanay Melchett in the chair.
I remember five or six years after
Blackadder IV, I was walking along
the street and somebody shouted at
me, "You bastard pigging m*rder*r!"
I thought, "Oh, God, it's a loony."
So I quickened my step and then I
heard footsteps hurrying after me.
"Mr Fry, Mr Fry!" I went, "Yes?"
He said, "Sorry, you seem upset."
I said, "You called me a
bastard pigging m*rder*r."
He said, "No,
I said Flanders pigeon m*rder*r."
The case before us
is that of the Crown
versus Captain Edmund Blackadder.
The Flanders pigeon m*rder*r.
Clerk, hand me the black cap,
I'll be needing that.
I love a fair trial.
For all the comedy bawling and
bleating, the final episode saw
events take an extraordinary turn
as Captain Blackadder and his troops
braced themselves for
the inevitable.
Don't forget your stick, lieutenant.
Rather, sir. I wouldn't want to
face a machine-g*n without this.
I just remember feeling, you know,
the impending doom, for my character,
'and I remember feeling
'this strange sort of knot
in the pit of my stomach.'
It was the first time, as an actor,
that I had felt
the predicament of my character.
'I was going to die
at the end of the week.'
'It was much more like
a serious play or a drama'
as all the comedy kind of melts
and fades out of it,
and it becomes sadder and sadder,
'and more and more tragic,
'and, eventually,
almost unbearably moving and sad.
'It's valedictory.'
I hope no-one was left in any
doubt of the respect
I think
everybody on the team had for...
for the sacrifices made and the
honour of the people involved.
But it was a damn silly w*r
and if ever there was a subject,
you know, requiring of satire,
it's people,
no matter how honourably
and no matter how nobly,
blindly going to w*r.
Company, one pace forward!
On the signal, Company will advance.
WHISTLE BLOWS
Good luck, everyone.
WHISTLE BLOWS
CHARGE!
PERCUSSIVE RATTLE OF g*nf*re
In those days, you had to get out
of the studio by o'clock.
If you didn't, the electricians
would pull the switch.
'At ten to ten, we finished filming
in our normal studio,'
we then had to race across
to the other studio
and it was then that we saw this
no-man's land set for the first time
and it looked dreadful.
OK, well, this, apparently,
is the original footage
from the very last scene
of Blackadder IV
where they all go over the top.
I haven't seen this since .
Action! Charge!
They're actually only running -
what? -
yards
before they hit the barbed wire
and stand around
looking like lemons,
then pretend to die
and it's very embarrassing.
CHARGE!
RATTLE OF MACHINE g*ns
g*nf*re CONTINUES
HE CHUCKLES
It's pretty unconvincing, isn't it?
Now they've done
a close-up here.
There's a ghastly sh*t
of Hugh and Tim
and Baldrick dying.
Rowan pretending to die
but keeping his eyes open.
He's getting up and he looks cross.
Well, that's...
me looking decidedly miffed.
And that's the end of it.
I can remember coming away thinking,
"I've no idea how we're
going to end the series."
I thought they would end it before
we actually went over the top.
It's one of the lowest points,
I think, of my television career
thinking, "The end of this amazing
series and I've just screwed it up."
As it was so obvious
that we had so little material to
work with, we had to really slow
the pictures right down in order
to stretch them in time
but that produced
an incredibly good effect
with the flashes which were going
over on the right of the picture
and the debris
that falls over Rowan's character.
In slow motion,
this suddenly achieved a grandeur
which was not obvious
in the full motion.
The assistant editor said,
"What if we slowed the sound down?"
ECHOING g*nf*re
And suddenly we had
this - pwuffch! -
this slow-motion sound effect and it
starts to get really quite spooky.
BLACKADDER THEME AT SLOW SPEED
Having got Rowan virtually obscured
by the debris,
to go to the next sh*t
where we're now
in a blank no-man's land wide sh*t,
our characters are seen virtually
to melt into the landscape.
And then somebody,
I think it was the PA, said,
"We should get some poppies.
What if...? I think..."
And someone got very excited and
ran upstairs to the picture library
and got a still,
a transparency, of some poppies.
The last decision,
some bright spark in sound,
said,
"Let's put some birdsong on it."
TRILL OF BIRDSONG
Even in the edit
it was obviously one of the most
moving things that I had ever seen.
In the years since the series
ended, the team have each gone on
to achieve greatness
in their own right.
But for all of them, there remains
something special
about the Blackadder era.
'I think that I'd have to say
that it just seems an unbelievably'
lucky break that something
which was just a bit of work
that I did for a chunk of time,
you know, doing the best I could
with people I really liked,
has turned out to last so well.
'I don't think there'd been anything
'that enjoyed history like that.'
The relationship between lords
and ladies and dukes and peasants.
The whole panoply and richness of
what it is to come from our culture.
'It was just
a very enjoyable experience'
of spending extended periods of time
with people with whom you felt
a tremendous creative empathy.
I was doing Time Team once
and somebody said me,
"Here, aren't you that bloke
that used to be funny?"
THEY CHUCKLE
Only one question remains.
Dear, oh, dear. Oh, Lord.
Will they ever be funny together
again?
Would you do it again? What?
Blackadder. No.
Because?
HE SIGHS
Too old...for one thing.
I don't think people want to see us
the way we look now. I really don't.
They want those memories.
There's often talk
of a fifth series.
If you had to do another one, what
setting would you like to do it in?
If we'd done another one, I think we
were going to set it in the ' s.
He had this idea of Adder
as a sort of Brian Epstein figure
and Baldrick as a drummer,
a Ringo-style drummer,
called Bald Rick
who has to wear a Beatle wig.
Rowan as the bastard son
of Queen Elizabeth II
but also running a rock band
in the King's Road.
It's already sounding sh*t.
That'll be why we never made it.
The one I really liked the idea for
was the one set in Neanderthal times.
Out of the jungle comes
h*m* Blackadder.
I thought you meant gay Blackadder!
Oh, I thought you meant
h*m* Blackadder.
I was just going, "Not many parts
for girls there then!"
What about you, Tony,
what would you've liked?
We talked about loads of ones.
I love the idea of a cowboy one.
I'd do that. Definitely.
Where I get to be a sort of Calamity
Jane or something. Fantastic.
In a prisoner-of-w*r camp
in the Second World w*r.
I've always personally favoured
the Colditz idea.
But maybe it's best to leave
these things as a memory.
SCOTTISH ACCENT: Aye, times past.
That's what they were.
# Blackadder, Blackadder
# His taste is rather odd
# Blackadder, Blackadder
# A randy little sod!
# Blackadder, Blackadder
# Who gives a toss?
♪ No-one! ♪