Blackadder Rides Again

Tell me, Edmund

Do you have 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 20-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 25 years ago.

I'd mud-wrestle my own mother for a ton of cash, an amusing clock and a sack of French porn.

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 35 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 war.

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 7 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 War.

MACHINE GUN 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, 25 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 shot we shot 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

Rate this script:0.0 / 0 votes