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James Croot is the editor of Stuff to Watch.
OPINION: “Black: his gloves of finest mole
Black: his codpiece made of metal
His horse is blacker than a vole
His pot is blacker than his kettle
Black Adder, Black Adder, with many a cunning plan
Black Adder, Black Adder, you horrid little man”
Along with The Young Ones and its spiritual sequel Filthy, Rich and Catflap, this was one of most anarchic, endlessly quotable and crowd-pleasing sitcoms of the 1980s.
And while its later, Ben Elton-penned seasons were far more consistently funny and verbally dexterous, there’s something about the original Blackadder that has made its many hilariously funny scenes, conceits and one-liners sear into the memory of all who have seen it in the 40 years since it debuted on British screens on June 15, 1983.
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Rowan Atkinson’s Blackadder first arrived on British screens on June 15, 1983.
Doing for the latter part of the British Middle Ages what Monty Python’s Life of Brian did for the Roman Empire – mercilessly take the mickey out of it – Blackadder brought English history (albeit a slightly alternative one) and the works of William Shakespeare to life (his Henry V, Richard III, Julius Cesar, Hamlet and Macbeth are all riffed upon or parodied in the opening episode alone) for more than one generation – a group who, at the time, also needed a laugh as the policies of Thatcher government started to bite.
I first saw an episode more than 15 months after its initial bow, while staying with the South Shields family of a man my father and I had met on a European bus tour.
As an impressionable 10-year-old, I was struck by its colourful characters (the bowl-cut barneted eponymous prince, his dim noble friend Percy and the blustering King Richard IV – the latter played with over-the-top relish by the booming Brian Blessed – the particular highlights), schoolboy humour (bodily functions, pithy putdowns and sexual innuendo abounded) and a heady mix of smart, well-thought-out jokes and japes that relied heavily on the physicality of star Rowan Atkinson (watching it now, it’s easy to see how his “rubber” facial expressions and ability to execute a perfect pratfall led to the likes of Bean and Johnny English, although I have always preferred his more verbose roles).
Excited by what I witnessed, I couldn’t wait to tell my older brothers and schoolmates what I had seen, particularly since they would have to wait another three months before TVNZ finally got around to airing the first episode in the six-part series at 9.30pm on December 13, 1984.
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Frank Finlay’s Witchsmeller Pursuivant was one of the many memorable characters to grace the first series of Blackadder.
That they then went on to almost endlessly repeat it – and the subsequent three series – almost every year for the next decade-and-a-half is testament to its enduring quality. Sure the sexism, pervading sense of punching-down and scatological humour may not be as warmly received now as it was then, but there is something timeless about Atkinson and the Wellington-born Richard Curtis’ scripts.
Made today, such a show would no doubt be filled with anachronistic pop-culture and zeitgeisty references, here, it just brought some ideas (mainly from Shakespeare’s plays) forward around 100 years and diverted from traditional English history by having Richard III (a brilliantly acerbic Peter Cook in one of his final roles) accidentally killed by our protagonist during the Battle of Bosworth Field and succeeded by his son – Blessed’s Richard IV.
The late 15th Century-set comedy also covered a lot of ground and chewy topics during its short run. Not only did it arguably present a very different Richard III (something that no doubt would have impressed the society featured in this year’s summer minor movie hit The Lost King), but it also tackled the Crusades, the Plague, tensions between church and state, arranged marriages, witch hunts and conspiracies to overthrow the Crown.
The tales definitely involved more-than-minor peril for our “heroes” (Atkinson’s Blackadder, Tim McInnerny’s Lord Percy and Tony Robinson’s Baldrick), while their “cunning plans” certainly weren’t as successful as their descendents’ would be in the Elizabethan, Georgian and Great War-focused subsequent series.
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Blackadder diverts from English history by having Brian Blessed’s Richard IV (right) succeed Peter Cook’s Richard III as King.
Indeed, Prince Edmund himself is very different to Lord Blackadder, the Prince Regent’s butler and the British army captain. Snively, weak-willed and whiny (“I have erred and strayed like a lost ox… I have coveted my father’s adultery… I have not always honoured my neighbour’s ass,” he laments while facing near certain death by being burnt at the stake), he succeeds more by dumb luck than good management or wits, while still “just” keeping himself above his inner-circle of two (although, arguably, Baldrick is actually his intellectual superior in this series).
“Far from being a fit consort for a prince of the realm, you would bore the leggings off a village idiot,” he chides Percy at one point. “You ride a horse rather less well than another horse would. Your brain would make a grain of sand look large and ungainly.”
Featuring a surprising amount of outdoor footage (producer John Lloyd once said that a colleague summed it up best by saying that it, “looks a million dollars, but it cost a million pounds”), it might lack the refinement and coolness of the brilliant second series (and Miranda Richardson’s scene-stealing Elizabeth I) or the poignancy of Blackadder Goes Forth, but the original Blackadder deserves its place in the pantheon of the best British sitcoms of all-time.
Whether it’s Miriam Margoyles’ larger-than-life, passionate Spanish Infanta, Frank Finlay’s skunk-haired Witchsmeller Pursuivant, Rick Mayall’s Mad Gerald, or the dangerously idiotic members of The Black Seal, it has gifted us a cadre of still instantly recognisable creations that continue to raise a smile (and sometimes fits of giggles) whenever brought up in conversation, or you stumble across some footage.
Blackadder is currently available to stream on Prime Video.
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