- 1 day ago
Category
🎥
Short filmTranscript
00:01Tell me, Edmund, do you have someone special in your life?
00:05Well, yes, as a matter of fact, I do.
00:07Who?
00:08Me.
00:11No, I mean someone you love and cherish
00:14and want to keep safe from all the horror and the hurt.
00:17Mmm, still me, really.
00:20I was travelling on a plane several years ago
00:23and an episode of The Blackadder came up on the entertainment channels
00:28and it was the nurse episode from the fourth series with Miranda.
00:33And, as far as I'm aware, it was an episode that I had never ever seen.
00:38Cigarette?
00:39No, thank you. I only smoke cigarettes after making love.
00:43So, back in England, I'm a 20-a-day man.
00:48I'm not a great laugher, sadly.
00:50But I might have sniggered at it,
00:52which was my way of saying that was very funny.
00:59Remarkably, Blackadder first slithered onto our screens all of 25 years ago.
01:05I'd mud-wrestle my own mother for a ton of cash,
01:08an amusing clock and a sack of French porn.
01:11So tonight, we celebrate the series that sired a comic generation
01:15and a quantum of quotable lines.
01:17You've really worked out your banter, haven't you?
01:20No, not really. This is a different thing.
01:22It's spontaneous and it's called wit.
01:24We travel by train, plane, boat and automobile
01:28to track down the original cast and creators
01:31who've gone on to conquer all corners of the known universe.
01:35If you should falter, remember that Captain Darling and I are behind you.
01:39About 35 miles behind you.
01:43We travel from Northumberland...
01:46When we were filming here,
01:47it was the first time I'd ever met a camp Geordie.
01:50...to northern France.
01:51If ever there was a subject requiring of satire,
01:54it's people blindly going to war.
01:58From Hollywood...
01:59There were some rather large egos.
02:02I happened to be perfect,
02:03but everyone else is just a sort of big-headed twerp.
02:07To the Horn of Africa.
02:09After Blackadder, I sort of semi-retired, really,
02:11and I bought this small African town, Pitendwe.
02:15And the land you can see there, up until the hills,
02:18that's all mine.
02:19Behind is Christopher Biggins,
02:21except the hill further on.
02:22That's the S Club 7 and Boys Zone Accountant.
02:32Blackadder, to remind those from another planet,
02:34followed the exploits of the devilishly cunning Edmund Blackadder
02:38and his trustily stupid sidekick, Baldrick.
02:42Baldrick, believe me,
02:44eternity and the company of Beelzebub,
02:46and all his hellish instruments of death,
02:49will be a picnic compared to five minutes with me
02:51and this pencil.
02:56The pair journey from the mayhem of the Middle Ages,
02:59through the terrible Tudors,
03:03to the gorgeous Georgians,
03:07Ending up in the First World War.
03:15As an historical sitcom, it's timeless,
03:18and keeps on twisting and turning its way
03:20into the public's affections like,
03:22well, a twisty-turny thing.
03:25And your chosen subject?
03:27Blackadder.
03:27Blackadder the TV series.
03:29Blackadder goes forth.
03:30It's even the backbone of school history lessons.
03:33Now, who's heard of Blackadder?
03:36I want to be remembered when I'm dead.
03:38I want books written about me.
03:39I want songs sung about me.
03:41And then hundreds of years from now,
03:43I want episodes from my life
03:45to be played out weekly at half past nine
03:47by some great heroic actor of the age.
03:52Now, for the first time,
03:54Blackadder himself, Rowan Atkinson,
03:56and producer John Lloyd,
03:57are retracing the story of the show.
04:00A story that began at Oxford University,
04:02where a young Atkinson first met the show's fellow creator,
04:06Richard Curtis.
04:11I did nothing of a theatrical nature
04:15in my first term at Oxford.
04:18I, you know, I was just relishing the whole,
04:20you know, sort of slightly oldy-worldy,
04:23you know, privileged nature of the place
04:25and going to endless organ recitals.
04:27I was a great lover of the organ.
04:29I met Rowan in a small room
04:32a don's room in some college
04:34with people who'd answered an advertisement
04:37for the Etceteras,
04:38which was the Oxford sort of sketch writing group.
04:43He described me as being like a cushion,
04:46like a cushion because I sat on the chair
04:49and said nothing.
04:50I thought he was a stuffed toy.
04:52I mean, he didn't say anything
04:52for the first three meetings,
04:54just a curiously shaped object in the corner.
04:56And then, just when we were trying to decide
04:58what the material should be,
05:00and we'd all been handing in sketches for months,
05:02Rowan actually stood up and did
05:04two absolutely astonishing sketches.
05:10Ainsley.
05:17Babcock.
05:20Bland.
05:24I was an enormous admirer of Rowan Atkinson.
05:27I'd seen him in Edinburgh
05:27where he'd been a cult performer
05:29from his earliest performances there.
05:31Nancy boy, Potter.
05:39Nibble.
05:42And I don't remember ever having laughed so much.
05:45I'd really genuinely weed myself at one point.
05:48Just a small amount,
05:49you'd be pleased to know,
05:49but I did weed myself
05:50at Rowan's schoolmaster monologue.
05:52Nibble!
05:54Leave Orifice alone.
06:03Not the nine o'clock news,
06:04the show that brought alternative comedy to TV
06:07was the next step for Rowan and Richard.
06:12It was while working together
06:13on the groundbreaking sketch show,
06:16but the idea for Blackadder started to take shape,
06:18and they made a pilot
06:20that's never been seen till now.
06:30And then there's the Morris dancers, of course.
06:33Now, look, we're not having them.
06:34Morris dancing is the most despicable,
06:36fatuous, tenth-rate entertainment I've ever seen.
06:39A load of ephemeral blacksmiths
06:41waving bits of white cloth
06:42they've been wiping their noses on.
06:44It's a positive health hazard.
06:46Go away!
06:47The thing we really didn't want to do
06:51was anything that could be, in any sense,
06:53be compared to Fawlty Towers.
06:56I remember that was almost the starting point.
06:59You know, if it's one thing it must be,
07:00that's Fawlty Towers, or anything like it.
07:02And, of course, the great inspiration,
07:03the other side of it,
07:04the thing we did want it to be quite like,
07:06was Errol Flynn's Robin Hood.
07:14The pilot turned into the first series,
07:17featuring a blackadder very different
07:20from the brilliant bounder we came to know.
07:22What a little bird!
07:26It was a grand affair,
07:28set in the Middle Ages
07:29at the stately Annick Castle in Northumberland.
07:37Well, so 25 years ago,
07:39we found ourselves coming to this town for the first time.
07:45Oh, look, there's a bit of castle.
07:46There's a sort of gate.
07:47I'm sure when we came on the recce,
07:48we thought, oh, no, this is really disappointing.
07:50Yeah.
07:51Is that it, just that gate?
07:53Yeah.
07:53Just that gate?
07:54Yeah, it's a bit squat.
07:57Oh, my God, there it is.
07:59Ah, now this does ring bells.
08:01Yes.
08:02Although, I have to say,
08:03the whole field is an awful lot more spruce.
08:07It's a lot.
08:08It's very trim, isn't it?
08:09It wasn't like this.
08:10I mean, look at that grass.
08:27You know, there are lots of castles in, you know, Kent or somewhere,
08:30which just don't have this sense of openness and bleakness,
08:34which Annick has, particularly in the snow in February.
08:38All I can remember is thinking, look at all the stuff that would...
08:41You know, this place would have been full of people, wouldn't it?
08:43As far as the eye could see, horses and dogs and...
08:48This is where the first shot we shot begins.
08:50As you say goodbye to Maldry.
08:55I remember the fantastic sound of hooves...
08:57Fantastic sound, yeah, exactly.
08:59...on this stone inside this tunnel.
09:02I remember when you were on that horse that first day,
09:06you leaned down from the horse
09:07and there was a little dewdrop hanging off the end of your nose
09:10because it was so cold, you know.
09:11Oh, yeah, yes, yes.
09:13A raindrop there.
09:14And then you said, um, what voice shall I use?
09:18Help! Help!
09:20We haven't thought about this at all.
09:23Get out of my way!
09:25Are you going on a journey, my lord?
09:27No, I thought I'd stand here all day and talk to you.
09:30You'll be needing someone to tend your horse, then.
09:32What is your profession?
09:38I've got a retired Morris dancer.
09:42I found this the other day.
09:44I actually kept a diary of the few days.
09:47The 12th of February, 1983.
09:48Filming has been fantastically slow and tedious.
09:51The snow comes down on the words turnover as if summoned by an incantation
09:56and a remarkable variety of textures.
09:58Often it's as big as gravel stones
10:01and the flagstones look like a working model of Brownian motion.
10:04Oh, that's rather...
10:04That's exactly an excellent lyrical writing.
10:07Very good.
10:09Very well written, the whole thing.
10:09Thank you so much.
10:10Rather better than the series, though.
10:15On Monday, Tuesday, worried Drevely that Rowan's character was a disaster,
10:19but it seems to be gelling well.
10:21Oh.
10:22Yeah, it's gelled.
10:23Tim McInerney is brilliant, has his Tony Robinson quite splendid juices
10:26being squeezed from a rather shriveled selection of lemons.
10:31What comes in my head first about series one is freezing to death in Anik Castle.
10:37I can remember on the very first day, Tim McInerney and I started to get the giggles
10:41because in the previous hour, we had been subjected to five different kinds of snow.
10:46It was everything the North East had to throw at us.
10:50The hailstones are as fat as mint imperials
10:53and it's so cold we have to wear our long johns in the bath.
10:56Despite its quite graphic description of the difficult conditions,
11:00actually, the tone is quite optimistic.
11:03I mean, you don't sound like a man about to jump off a cliff.
11:07What used to be strong about British comedy
11:10was that people went from writing sketches to writing sitcom
11:13and their sketch craft was carried through.
11:17Now, let's get down to business, shall we?
11:19Business, my mum?
11:19Yes.
11:20Baldwickers have been looking at some of the ways
11:21we can actually make a bit of money on this job.
11:25Some of the things that are best in series one are really sketches.
11:29There appear to be four major profit areas.
11:32Hmm?
11:33Curses, pardons, relics and selling the sexual favours of nuns.
11:37You think some people actually pay for them?
11:41Well, foreign businessmen, other nuns.
11:43We weren't an ensemble at that time
11:45and in a way, for me, I think,
11:47that scene was the first time that it really gelled.
11:50Moving on to relics, we've got shrouds from Turin.
11:56Wine from the wedding at Cana.
11:59Splinters from the cross.
12:01Then, of course, there's stuff made by Jesus
12:05in his days in the carpentry shop.
12:06Mm-hm.
12:07We've got pipe racks, coffee tables, coats...
12:13Waterproof sandals, should I remember.
12:15This was my one good scene in the first book ever since.
12:19I was so pleased I got this.
12:21Oh, I haven't finished this one yet.
12:23It's so verbal, isn't it?
12:24Nice props, I'm not knocking them at all,
12:26but just the three of us being serious and pulling faces.
12:31Absolutely.
12:32I have here a true relic.
12:35What is it?
12:37It is a bone from the finger of our Lord.
12:41It cost me 31 pieces of silver.
12:46Baldrick, you stand amazed.
12:48What?
12:49I thought they only came in boxes of ten.
12:52Look at you.
12:53You should be shocked for that kind of acting.
12:55No, I could have been much worse.
12:57I remember Blackadder being lots of fun.
13:00In the end, you were about as much rest to me as a human head.
13:04Affliction with which you must be familiar,
13:06never actually having had a break.
13:09Hello.
13:09The Spanish Infanta didn't know she was ugly.
13:13That's the sad thing, really, about it.
13:15Here I am, awaiting the arrival of the most beautiful, ravishing...
13:20Look, leave me alone, will you?
13:21I'll try to talk to someone while you're
13:23whittling away like a pox-ridden moorhead.
13:26Amor me.
13:27She loved Blackadder.
13:29And she...
13:30She was electrified sexually by him.
13:33What?
13:34What?
13:39I have waited for this moment all my life.
13:46Your nose is smaller than I expected.
13:49For him, it was tough.
13:51He felt a huge responsibility, kind of carrying the show.
14:00It's extraordinary, the physical difference with Rowan,
14:02between the first and the second series.
14:04Yeah.
14:05Do your funny walk, then, Adder.
14:08Moi?
14:08Do the funny... the funny Blackadder walk.
14:11I haven't got a funny Blackadder walk.
14:13What's my sample word?
14:15It wasn't like that.
14:16Or something Weasley.
14:20What seems odd now is that Tony was the streetwise smart guy,
14:27and Rowan was an idiot.
14:37Incredibly dysfunctional, almost twisted person,
14:41a bit like what Mr. Bean became.
14:46Rowan wasn't entirely relaxed in the first series,
14:50as were none of us,
14:51because we weren't quite sure...
14:52We were still not quite sure what we were doing, you know?
14:54Rowan's character wasn't properly sorted out.
14:57Oh, my God! This is impossible! I can't do this!
15:00We tried to do too much with Rowan's character in series one,
15:05because he was sort of aggressive and stupid and posh
15:09and cowardly and brave.
15:11So I think it was a sort of agglomeration of quite a few funny things
15:16that we knew Rowan could do.
15:18But it's interesting how, you know,
15:21an amusing costume and a daft haircut,
15:24an amusing character doth not make.
15:28I sat there wanting to laugh and unable to a lot of the time.
15:32I did laugh quite a lot,
15:34but I hoped desperately that I shall laugh more the next week.
15:36What exactly is funny about this?
15:40What is funny about having that character?
15:43Farewell, sweet England and noble castle,
15:48first watering place in the desert of my life.
15:53Farewell, gentle gibbets and sweet crenellations,
15:59and farewell, dearest gutters.
16:04I remember that famous comment of yours, you know,
16:06it looks like a million dollars but cost a million pounds.
16:08I suppose a good thing about the modern BBC
16:10is that they would never have allowed us to do this,
16:13you know, to do what we did.
16:15I mean, you know, they would never, you know,
16:17just let a few young, you know, creative people come up to Anik
16:22and shoot.
16:23Well, no, they wouldn't, but then, on the other hand,
16:25we were very proud of it at the time we did it.
16:28The basic fault is the script, finally.
16:30Yes.
16:30Because Rowan Atkinson and this chap who he writes with
16:33have written an awful lot,
16:34and it seems to me that six episodes are too much for them.
16:36There were an awful lot of half-employed script writers around
16:39who could have been brought in to good effect.
16:43There was, in fact,
16:44a slightly more than half-employed script writer knocking about.
16:48Ben Elton was behind the cult series of The Young Ones
16:51and was brought in to hone the writing of the second series.
16:54Is the sitcom written or is it from history?
16:56I mean, not the sitcom, the drama, the comedy.
16:58Well, that sounds like a good idea, by the way.
17:00I'm working on the pilot episode.
17:03I've now had a screening cancelled and the end is hard to get right
17:06and I don't know how to get the special effects, right?
17:08I think we met at a script meeting
17:11for what was going to turn into Spitting Image
17:15and I was startled to find a huge fan of Blackadder 1.
17:19These were the before the days of ratings.
17:21That was always the shock.
17:22I mean, I still don't know how many people watched
17:24any episode of Blackadder.
17:27And I remember on BBC,
17:29well, I used to wander around Shepherds Bush
17:32looking in people's windows,
17:34particularly people with basement flats
17:36to see whether or not anyone was watching Blackadder 1.
17:38You were looking to see if there were any nude girls
17:40who left their windows?
17:41No, I was looking to see whether or not anyone was watching Blackadder 1
17:43because one didn't know whether or not it would be a success or otherwise.
17:45Well, I wonder who that kind of ginger perv was
17:48whilst Kate and I were singing the theme tune.
17:51He lived rough.
17:53He talked rough.
17:56He wore a rough.
18:00Blackadder 2.
18:02Coming soon.
18:05Ish.
18:06They would sit in different rooms, probably even in different houses,
18:10having divided the series into two halves,
18:12and they'd write three episodes each and then swap over.
18:15And it always led you somewhere else.
18:16You know, okay, execution, head being cut off,
18:18how's he gonna get out of it?
18:19Obviously stick the head down the back of his tights.
18:21Obvious, you know, but it may not have been obvious
18:22to the person who started with the beheading.
18:26Percy.
18:27Well, I've got the body, my lord, and I see you've got the head.
18:29Yes, but look, it's no good, Percy.
18:31No one's ever gonna believe we've just cut it off.
18:32It's gone green.
18:34Ben and I never wrote together,
18:35mainly because we had better things to do with our time.
18:38We were both completely obsessed by pop music.
18:42Madness.
18:42Very great era for Madonna.
18:45I seem to remember endless meetings
18:46when all we talked about was which was our favourite track on True Blue.
18:49And I remember us going to see Kylie Minogue,
18:52and we were literally the only two men there.
18:55It was very early on in her career,
18:57and the entire audience was made up of 30-year-old women
18:59who watched Neighbours,
19:00and their daughters, who also watched Neighbours,
19:03and were, by the time Kylie came on, fast asleep.
19:08However enjoyable the writing process
19:10and however well the scripts were shaping up,
19:12Ben and Richard were less than lucky, lucky, lucky
19:15to get an ominous letter from the BBC's head of comedy.
19:19Michael Grade had come in, and he looked at the ratings,
19:22and it doesn't stack up.
19:23It's not good enough for the little ratings they're getting,
19:26and it doesn't get enough good reviews.
19:28It's finished.
19:29And I remember the sentence very clearly,
19:30for this season, and realistically that means for good.
19:33Very sorry about this. It's over.
19:35At which point, a combination really of John Lloyd,
19:39Rowan Atkinson, and Rowan's agent, Richard Armitage at the time,
19:43went into overdrive.
19:44So there was this mad weekend where Richard and Ben and I
19:47are sitting at three tight rows, desperately cutting out all the film,
19:50taking out anything that had a silly costume,
19:52anything that was at all expensive.
19:54And we went back, I went back two days later,
19:58beginning of the next week, to John Howard Davis, and said,
20:01here you are, these are the cheapest sitcoms on telly,
20:03and please may we have another chance.
20:06The key element to the success of the second series, though,
20:09would be the transformation of Blackadder himself
20:12from nerdy medieval prince of series one
20:15to suave Elizabethan courtier.
20:18The very first lesson was to pick Rowan's character,
20:22to get it exactly clear what it was he was gonna do.
20:26And as Ben says, there was a whole imperious, sarcastic, posh side of Rowan,
20:33which we both loved, which we knew had a right,
20:36which came very naturally to both of us.
20:38Tell me, young Crone, is this Putney?
20:41That it be. That it be.
20:44Yes, it is, not that it be.
20:48You don't have to talk in that stupid voice to me.
20:50I'm not a tourist.
20:52It's lovely to have this sort of pecking order,
20:55and to place Blackadder somewhere in it, somewhere in the middle,
20:58so he can be very cynical about those above him
21:00and indeed very cynical about those below him.
21:05Oh, very good shot, my lord.
21:07Thank you, Boris.
21:10Sorry, I'm late.
21:12Oh, don't bother apologising. I'm sorry you're alive.
21:15There's a thing about comedy in Britain.
21:17Britain's a terrible place for class, as everybody knows.
21:21You look at a sitcom, the moment the lights go up, as it were,
21:25and you think, oh, God, it's upper-class people.
21:28I don't care about them.
21:29Or, oh, God, it's middle-class dentists.
21:30I don't care about them.
21:31Or, oh, God, it's wacky scousers.
21:34I don't care about them.
21:35You know what I mean?
21:36Everybody seems to hate everybody else in Britain
21:38and thinks up a reason not to care about them.
21:41And one of the marvellous things about Blackadder 2,
21:44and all the subsequent Black Adders,
21:45is that they're set in a very rigidly hierarchical world.
21:48My lord, the queen does demand your urgent presence on pain of death.
21:52Oh, damn.
21:52And the path of my life is strewn with cowpats
21:56from the devil's own satanic herd!
21:59You've got real threat.
22:01Blackadder is going to have his head chopped off at any moment.
22:04It's perfectly possible this mad, capricious queen
22:06really could say, this time I mean it.
22:08Oh, Edmund, I do love it when you get cross.
22:12Sometimes they think about having you executed
22:14just to see the expression on your face.
22:19It's within court, which is a very small, bejeweled world, you know.
22:24And there are these little, little people in there
22:26who think they rule the world.
22:29And, of course, it was only me that rules the world.
22:33What is it?
22:34A stick.
22:37Is it a stick, Lord Blackadder?
22:39Yes, ma'am, but it is a very special stick
22:42because when you throw it away, it comes back.
22:47Well, that's no good, is it?
22:51Because when I throw things away, I don't want them to come back.
22:55You! Get rid of it.
22:57Richard and Ben had created this idea
23:00that the queen was like a little girl with an enormous amount of power.
23:04I think we interviewed 40 actresses.
23:07We were really beginning to get desperate.
23:09It was probably written in a pretty two-dimensional way.
23:12They all just were playing girls from B-dells.
23:14The 41st person who walked in,
23:16we were really about to shoot ourselves,
23:18was this blonde who clearly hadn't washed her hair.
23:22Apparently, I walked in like something
23:24that had been pulled through a hedge backwards
23:26to spot the difference.
23:28Here was this astonishing actress
23:31who did nothing like we expected it.
23:34Every line was odd, peculiar, weirdly pitched.
23:37I may have the body of a weak and feeble woman,
23:42but I have the heart and stomach of a concrete elephant.
23:48Prove it!
23:50Certainly well.
23:52First, I'm going to have a little drinky,
23:54and then I'm going to execute the whole ballet lot of you.
24:03Unbeknown to most people, and Miranda,
24:06in a secret corner of the BBC,
24:09where few dare to tread,
24:11there's the forgotten costumes department.
24:13In the bowels of the building now.
24:21What have they got in its pockets?
24:26Oh!
24:28God!
24:31This looks really familiar.
24:34Oh!
24:36I hope several hundred moths don't fly out.
24:40Look at this!
24:43Look at even the work in the cuffs.
24:47All these little individual pearls,
24:51most of them still there,
24:53just bobbling away.
24:55I remember the weight!
24:58Bloody hell!
25:00Yes, that dear friend, as I remembered.
25:03And not only, not only the dress,
25:05not only the wig,
25:07not only the ruff,
25:08but also a permander
25:11and a mirror
25:13attached to my dress.
25:15Do I look absolutely divine and regal,
25:17and yet, and at the same time,
25:19very pretty and rather accessible?
25:22You are every jolly jactar's dream, majesty.
25:26I thought as much.
25:27Had we not lucked out and getting Miranda,
25:29probably Blackadder 2 wouldn't have worked.
25:32Yeah.
25:33I think it's held together rather well.
25:37Rather better than I have.
25:41Even though in theory I had the title role of the programme,
25:46that because there was Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie
25:48and Tony Robinson,
25:49and there was this wonderful feeling of being able to delegate,
25:52of being almost like the man in the middle,
25:53who was able to say, you know,
25:55ladies and gentlemen,
25:56Mr. Tony Robinson will now be extremely amusing.
26:01I would advise you to make the explanation
26:03you were about to give phenomenally good.
26:08You said get the door.
26:09Not good enough. You're fired.
26:11But my lord, I've been in your family since 1532.
26:14So is syphilis. Now get out of here.
26:16Ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Stephen Fry.
26:18Now, Melty, you really are a beginner.
26:20You're not even wearing a pair of comedy breasts.
26:22Au contraire, Becker.
26:31You silly, silly people.
26:33To have come all the way to Indigway
26:36with a pair of comedy breasts.
26:39Well, er, down the hatch.
26:41Whee!
26:43Mmm.
26:45They still smell the same.
26:47How fantastic.
26:48I always felt sorry for those who came into the Blackadder
26:51to, you know, do their roles.
26:53You know, do their cameos.
26:59It's me, Flash!
27:02Some people managed it better than others.
27:05Flash by name, Flash by nature.
27:08Come here, camera.
27:10Come here.
27:11Come here.
27:13Hello, girls.
27:14It's Rick.
27:16Happy Christmas.
27:17Hooray!
27:18Hooray!
27:19Where have you been?
27:20Where haven't I been?
27:22Woof!
27:24I was surprised when they asked me.
27:26Very honouring that they should ask me.
27:28I said, all right, I'll do it,
27:29as long as I get more laughs than Rowan.
27:30So, my old mate, Eddie's getting hitched, eh?
27:35What's the matter?
27:36Can't stand the pace of the in-ground?
27:39Many actors have many facets.
27:42I do, I can do ego, and that's about it.
27:47Am I pleased to see you, or did I just put a canoe in my pocket?
27:51Down, boy!
27:52Down!
27:52Down!
27:52I've got a big one.
27:54It's a big one.
27:56But Flash out isn't really you, is it?
27:58I mean, it's...
27:58No, my ego.
28:01Who is that?
28:02I don't know, but he's in your place.
28:05Not for long!
28:07It really helped somebody coming in with a different style, shall we say.
28:14It gave everybody a bit of a kick up the arse, I think.
28:18There was a very good headbutt.
28:20I'm rather proud of that one.
28:21I headbutt him through the door.
28:25Look, I only took the part of Flash out for the women.
28:29Hi, Queenie.
28:29You look sexy.
28:32He's like Errol Flynn coming in, you know, and she's...
28:34She's obsessed.
28:36I've got such a crush on him.
28:38He's just bigger and louder and got more testosterone.
28:42Still worshipping God?
28:43Fancier tights.
28:44Last thing I heard, he started worshipping me!
28:47Ah-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!
28:50To be standing next to Rowan is quite an experience.
28:53My fiancée, Kate?
28:55Hi, baby.
28:56You see, then, that Rowan is also a great reactor.
29:08And at the end of it, Rick said,
29:10Did I win?
29:11Which isn't really in the spirit of the ensemble, is it?
29:15I don't know.
29:16Of course I haven't counted, but I got three and a half rounds of applause,
29:19and he didn't get one.
29:20Hooray!
29:23Series two was a brilliant success, and nothing stood in the way of series three.
29:29Dastardly duo moved from Elizabethan excess to the bewigged and perfumed finery of the 18th century.
29:37Series three, we took a big old gamble in the beginning that we ended up with such a small cast,
29:42because there'd been sort of five of them, hadn't there?
29:45There'd been Melchette and Nursey and Queenie and Percy and Baldrick and Rowan,
29:49and then this time, suddenly, there was just Baldrick, Rowan and Hugh.
29:54It was the casting of Prince George, alongside Blackadder and Baldrick,
29:59that brought new life to the show.
30:01The role went to an actor who's since quickened the pulse of America.
30:22It's a trial, Jon, you've no idea.
30:24Have you learned anything about medicine? Can you remember all the stuff?
30:26For about 20 minutes, you know, I can hold it in my head for about 20 minutes,
30:30and I could, for about 20 minutes, I could probably do a coronary bypass operation.
30:36If you catch me at the right hour, then, by all means,
30:41have an aortic infarction at my feet, and I'll fix it.
30:45But if it's the wrong hour, you're a goner.
30:48I have to say, it's my favourite series, Hugh, that one, and it's because of you.
30:51And I remember saying to you, on the set,
30:54that one day you are going to be such a world-famous actor.
30:57Stop it. I told you. Stop it.
30:59I bet you say that to all the actors in Blackadder third series.
31:02Hugh's always very self-deprecating about it,
31:05but that's the kind of bloke he is.
31:06He always says, oh, I just shouted a lot.
31:08I'm a gay bachelor, Blackadder.
31:10I'm a roarer, a rogerer, a gorger and a puker.
31:14I can't marry, I'm young, I'm firm buttock time.
31:19Froak.
31:20Well, yes, I suppose so.
31:22You used to get quite stressed when you were the Prince Regent.
31:25I came pre-stressed.
31:27Right.
31:28There was no stress that was added.
31:30I mean, that's what I do.
31:31I don't know why.
31:32I wish I didn't.
31:33I wish I could sort of relax and enjoy things more,
31:37but I don't.
31:37I worry about them.
31:38Just occasionally, one can say,
31:40now, come on, Hugh,
31:40it's the entire idea of your misery
31:43for us to spend the next three hours telling you how great you are,
31:46because whether or not that was the idea, that is the end result.
31:48Prince George is shy and just pretends to be bluff and crass
31:52and unbelievably thick and gittery,
31:55whilst deep down he is a soft little marshmallow-y, piglet-y type of creature.
32:00But I do love the Prince Regent.
32:02I love his attempt to be better all the time.
32:06I think that's one of the things that's so likeable about him,
32:08is he's always trying to improve himself,
32:10and we know how doomed it is.
32:11I mean, that vacant, panicky look in his eye, it's bliss.
32:14I terminated my uninterrupted categorisation
32:17of the vocabulary of our post-Normantime.
32:23I don't know what you're talking about,
32:24but it sounds damn saucy, you looking thing.
32:27The classic episode of series three
32:29saw the arrival of Robbie Coltrane as Dr Johnson.
32:33Here it is, sir.
32:33Author of the very first English dictionary.
32:36This book, sir, contains every word in our beloved language.
32:41Every single one, sir?
32:42Every single word, sir.
32:45Well, in that case, sir, I hope you will not object
32:47if I also offer the doctor my most enthusiastic contrafibularities.
32:53What?
32:55Contrafibularities, sir?
32:56It is a common word down our way.
32:58Damn!
33:00Oh, I'm sorry, sir.
33:02I'm anaspeptic,
33:04phrasmotic,
33:06even compunctuous to have caused you such pericombobulation.
33:11What?
33:12What?
33:12The funny thing about the dictionary episode
33:14is there are things in it which I really don't like.
33:18Robbie's wig,
33:19which doesn't fit properly.
33:21The poet.
33:22Be quiet, sir!
33:23Can't you see we're dying?
33:25The dream.
33:26I've suddenly realised I don't like dreams.
33:29Baldrick,
33:29who gave you permission to turn into an Alsatian?
33:33Oh, God, it's a dream, isn't it?
33:36It's a bloody dream.
33:39But the fundamental idea of the plot was a brilliant moment for us.
33:43Now, Baldrick, where's the manuscript?
33:45You mean the big papery thing tied up with string?
33:48Yes, Baldrick, the manuscript belonging to Dr Johnson.
33:51So you're asking where the big papery thing tied up with string
33:55belonging to the baity fellow in the black coat who just left is?
33:59Yes, Baldrick, I am.
34:01And if you don't answer,
34:02then the booted bony thing with five toes on the end of my leg
34:07will soon connect sharply
34:08with a soft dangly collection of objects in your shop.
34:11I can remember Richard saying,
34:13I had a great idea.
34:14Did you know it took Dr Johnson 25 years to write his dictionary?
34:18How about he finishes it,
34:19lends it to Blackadder,
34:20Baldrick puts it on the fire,
34:22Blackadder's got a weekend to rewrite the dictionary.
34:24What about D?
34:25I'm quite pleased with dog.
34:26Yes, and your definition of dog is?
34:29Not a cat.
34:32And I just thought that is such a beautiful conceit
34:36and that's a lot better than writing three good knob gags,
34:40which is what I was sort of trying to do.
34:44The dictionary episode was an appropriate highlight
34:47for a series that revelled in the richness of the English language
34:51and was never shy of a scintillating simile.
34:54He's madder than Mad Jack McMahon,
34:57the winner of last year's Mr. Madman competition.
35:00You look as happy as a man who thought a cat had done its business on his pie,
35:04but it turned out to be an extra big blackberry.
35:06I'm as poor as a church mouse that's just had an enormous tax bill
35:09on the very day his wife ran off with another mouse taking all the cheese.
35:13A burned novel is like a burned dog.
35:15Oh, shut up!
35:20The Blackadder scripts are so revered that all these years later,
35:24the team still pour over the subtleties of their trade
35:27with fellow literary luminaries wherever they can be found.
35:31I'm going to dedicate something to Derek, please.
35:35I love time, team.
35:37Thank you very much.
35:37And you really are a national treasure.
35:39He's a national treasure.
35:40Have you got a favourite kind of quotation?
35:42We used to play the game of guessing who'd written which line,
35:46and we were invariably wrong.
35:48Thanks.
35:52When it actually came to the rehearsals, and this got more and more intense,
35:55I think, sort of series by series, everyone became fantastically,
36:00and in the end, wonderfully greedy.
36:03We would do no rehearsing.
36:05We would just sit round at a table, just kind of arguing about the script
36:08and pulling the script to pieces.
36:09There was one where I said, I have a message, my lord,
36:13and Rowan said, that's the worst message I've ever read.
36:16And we all went, uh...
36:17And it ended up...
36:20That's the worst message I've ever heard since...
36:23Lord Nelson's famous signal at the Battle of the Nile.
36:27England knows Lady Hamilton is a virgin.
36:30Poke my eye out and cut off my arm if I'm wrong.
36:33But, I mean, people fought for their patch.
36:37You know, they didn't...
36:38Nobody just sort of towed the line and stood where they were told to stand
36:41and do what they were told to do.
36:43Everyone stood up for themselves and for their characters.
36:45Let's just say it was very free.
36:47Yes.
36:48And creative.
36:49But Richard wouldn't have said that.
36:51No. No. Just read it out, I think it was Richard's.
36:54Just read it out.
36:56They would literally sit around for the entire time discussing the script,
37:00and I know we would sometimes say, but actually,
37:02if you stood up and tried to act this script out,
37:05you might find out things about it.
37:08I hate to raise this, having worked on it for three hours,
37:11but do you think it's a very good joke, this orders Hugh since he suggested it?
37:15This was nothing to me.
37:16It was.
37:17It was nothing to me. It was up on the board. I just read it out.
37:20John and Richard and Hugh and Stephen conduct themselves in a very affable way.
37:30And when they talk about Blackadder now, it all seems like it was a bit jolly,
37:36slightly sticky sometimes, but basically fine.
37:41I don't really remember it quite like that. It was hard.
37:44Hours would pass, and packets of cigarettes would be got through,
37:47and huge quantities of polystyrene, hideous, muddy coffee would be drunk,
37:52in an effort to try and get the scripts right.
37:55No, hang on, hang on, there's something wrong here.
37:58Because surely, if you're ordering a cab for a Mr. Redgrove,
38:01oh, from Arnest Grove in that case.
38:03Sometimes it was very tense.
38:05I remember some very difficult times when we appeared to be just sitting around
38:10for two and a half hours, bemoaning the, you know, lack of writing clarity
38:18in a particular scene and desperately trying to think how that might be reorientated to work.
38:23Just change it to four.
38:24We're getting to play the cab.
38:27If you are a young writer, and you're in with your mates,
38:30and because you've known them for a long time, they're going to be able to slag you off
38:34in a way that other people probably won't now, because you're becoming successful.
38:37That's going to be difficult.
38:39I remember this, you know, like a heart attack.
38:43That was when I felt that the analysis was getting overblown,
38:48and that we were, I remember feeling, you know, it was better.
38:52We're now kind of feeling a duty to open everything up at all times.
38:56I thought it was Mr. Redgrove who was ordering the cab.
38:58In fact, what you're saying is that Mr. Redgrove is the person who's going to be picked up,
39:04but who's on the top bell.
39:06Yes.
39:09That's roughly how it was when it was good.
39:12And when it wasn't so good, it wasn't really like that.
39:15It was more strained.
39:17I'm not saying that those moments were rare, because they weren't.
39:20They were quite commonplace, but there was lots of, you know, long geurs in between.
39:26People sitting with their heads in their hands.
39:29I remember Stephen, at one point, just scraping his chair back like this enormous person,
39:34enormous person, striding around the room, striding around the room,
39:38and he came back to the table and he just grabbed a pencil and a piece of paper
39:42and put it in front of me, and it just said,
39:45And a cab for a Mr. Redgrave, picking up from 14 Arnott's Grove, ring-top bell.
39:54Yay!
39:56That worked!
39:58On the back of the third series, Blackadder was awarded its own Christmas special,
40:02a parody of Dickens' Christmas Carol with Ebenezer Blackadder in very different form.
40:09But the fourth series would take our comic anti-heroes into a place where heroes dwell,
40:15the First World War.
40:22Writer Ben Elton and producer John Lloyd have come to the Somme to reflect on the setting for the final
40:29series.
40:30I've always been so interested in the First World War and yet I've never been to the cemetery.
40:37I mean, we've all seen the footage and I've seen many a panning shot as we're doing now.
40:42But until you actually stand amongst tens of thousands of crosses, each with a name on it, it's really...
40:52I had a grandfather fight on either side. Did you know my German grandfather got an iron cross?
40:57No!
40:57Yes, he got an iron cross, which actually is buried in England
41:01because when, as Jewish refugees, they escaped from Nazi Europe,
41:06well, escaped, got out,
41:09my grandad brought his iron cross with him.
41:11Yeah.
41:11And my grandma, on discovery, was horrified, you know,
41:16here we are, German accents, iron cross,
41:19people might put two and two together.
41:21So she buried it in a garden in Hampstead.
41:25What we discussed back in 88 when we were writing it was not...
41:30sort of not taking easy laughs at the expense of, sort of, such mass heroism.
41:36And, um, you know, coming here today, I'm very glad we didn't.
41:42By the time we got to Blackadder Goes Forth, we'd always said that more than anything,
41:48what we'd like to do would be to create a series that was very claustrophobic,
41:53where the five or six of us who were the performers were trapped in a space.
41:58And what better way to feel that notion of claustrophobia
42:03than in the trenches in the First World War?
42:06Hear the words I sing,
42:09War's a horrid thing.
42:11So I sing, sing, sing.
42:15Ding-a-ling-a-ling.
42:17It was a really peculiar and bold thing to try and make a comedy out of,
42:21but I think, ultimately, a very sympathetic and respectful one,
42:26even though the characters were absurd and moronic at times,
42:34it never sort of, um, disrespected their courage or their sacrifice, I think.
42:40Oh, I joined up straight away, sir.
42:42August the 4th, 1914.
42:44Oh, what a day that was.
42:45Myself and the rest of the fellows leapfrogging down to the Cambridge recruiting office
42:49and then playing tiddlywinks in the queue.
42:52We'd hammered Oxford's tiddlywinkers only the week before,
42:54and there we were, off to hammer the bot.
42:57And how are all the boys now?
42:59Oh, well, uh, Jocko and the Badger bought it at the First Ypres, unfortunately.
43:03Quite a shock, Dad.
43:05There's awful policies of what were called the Pals Brigades,
43:09because in 1914 people joined up together, whole gangs, the pub,
43:12would all march to the recruiting station,
43:14a cricket team or the tiddlywinks team, as we said in Blackadder.
43:18And, uh, they'd all go together and they'd all be put in the same,
43:21because the idea was they'll fight together, they'll fight for each other,
43:23and, of course, this industrial war didn't really have a lot of time
43:26for people to fight for each other, because people would be mown down in an instant.
43:30Gosh, yes, I...
43:31I suppose I'm the only one of the Trinity Tiddlers still alive.
43:35Blummy, there's a thought, and not a jolly one.
43:38People don't stop making jokes because somebody was killed just round the corner.
43:42In many ways, life, as people say you've actually been in fighting in real wars,
43:47life becomes very precious and pumped up.
43:50Baldrick, what are you doing out there?
43:52I'm carving something on this bullet, sir.
43:54What are you carving?
43:55I'm carving Baldrick, sir.
43:59Why?
44:00It's a cunning plan, actually.
44:02Of course it is.
44:03You see, you know they say that somewhere there's a bullet with your name on it.
44:09Yes.
44:10Well, I thought if I owned the bullet with my name on it, I'd never get hit by it.
44:16One of the things that always strikes me about that last series is how isolated all the characters in it
44:22are.
44:22You're a bit cheesed off, sir.
44:24George, the day this war began, I was cheesed off.
44:27Within ten minutes of you turning up, I'd finished the cheese and moved on to the coffee and cigars.
44:33The world weariness of Blackadder was something kind of extraordinary.
44:37It was something kind of beaten down.
44:39He was not necessarily going to win all the time.
44:43And knew that he wasn't, which gave it a kind of darker edge, I thought.
44:47Baldrick finds his absolute apotheosis as the Tommy.
44:51You know, he can make the best of everything.
44:52He can turn things to his advantage.
44:55However ghastly it is, he can find a better puddle to go to.
44:58I believe that Baldrick is the key to Blackadder and the key to why it's popular.
45:02Because he's the common man.
45:04We actually all identify with this poor, downtrodden guy who's not respected by anybody.
45:08Even when he's supposed to be stupid, Baldrick's analysis of everything is simple but basically truthful.
45:15Are you looking forward to the big push?
45:18No, sir, I'm absolutely terrified.
45:23The healthy humour of the honest Tommy.
45:26I had the privilege of performing a part that represented the ordinary lives of the grandfathers of an awful lot
45:34of people in the country in which I live.
45:37But really, it was for them to imbue Baldrick with that notion rather than me.
45:43I was just a bloke who couldn't make coffee.
45:45Baldrick, fix us some coffee, will you?
45:47Then try to make it taste slightly less like mud this time.
45:50Not easy, I'm afraid, Captain.
45:52Why is this?
45:53Because it is mud.
45:54In the original script, Ben had just written this line about Baldrick saying that he'd made the coffee out of
46:00mud.
46:01We ran out of coffee 13 months ago.
46:03So every time I've drunk your coffee since, I have in fact been drinking hot mud.
46:08And then in rehearsals, as was so often the case, someone said, well, shouldn't there be milk in the coffee?
46:14Well, saliva.
46:16And then there should be sugar.
46:18Which is?
46:19Dandruff.
46:21And then I know this was Tim McInerney.
46:24Very late in the week, he suddenly said, just for us, not because he thought it would go in the
46:29script, because we could always make it cappuccino.
46:38There you are, sir.
46:40Ah, cappuccino.
46:47Have you got any of that brown stuff you sprinkle on the top?
46:50Well, I'm sure I could...
46:52No.
46:53No.
46:54In the initial rehearsals, he wasn't even called Darling.
46:58He was called Captain Cartwright, which is kind of dull.
47:02I mean, I didn't really know who he was and couldn't get an angle on him.
47:05And I had this bizarre idea, really, that maybe there was something laughable about him that was teasable.
47:11And then it occurred to me maybe a name, a really silly name.
47:14What's going on, darling?
47:16And suddenly this character was born out of nowhere just because of the name.
47:19You never mention this to me, sir?
47:21Well, we have to have some secrets, don't we, darling?
47:23I mean, it's such a simple joke calling someone Darling, especially if he's such a bitter, nasty man.
47:29They call him Darling.
47:30And the way that Stephen could come out, darling, get a laugh every single time.
47:34Captain Darling? Funny name for a guy, isn't it?
47:37Last person I called Darling was pregnant 20 seconds later.
47:42And every time his name is mentioned, it's just like a knife in his heart, twisting him round.
47:47And his hatred and self-loathing and his self-denial is just getting more and more tortured.
47:53Just doing my job, Blackadder.
47:55Obeying orders.
47:56And, of course, having enormous fun into the bargain.
47:59I mean, Darling and Blackadder are kind of the same, really.
48:02They're kind of lower-middle-class, you know, sort of semi-gentlemen.
48:07But, obviously, you know, one of them's managed to connive himself onto the staff.
48:10And the other one's, you know, bad lucked into the trenches.
48:14You're a damn fine chap.
48:16Not a pin-pushing, desk-sucking, blotter-jotter like Darling here.
48:21May, Darling?
48:22No, sir.
48:27Oh, you're always so good at this. Oh, yes.
48:32Oddly enough, these feet are not the same feet that I used to play General Melchert in Blackadder.
48:40Those were my earlier feet. I lost those feet, those two feet, in a card game to Keith Allen in
48:461992.
48:47So these are my second pair of feet.
48:50Young people playing old people is very funny.
48:54Because I was in my twenties and I was playing a General,
48:58it was somehow funnier than if I'd been the right age to be a General, which I now am.
49:03And it had to be a 30-year-old playing a 60-year-old.
49:05If it had been a 60-year-old actor, it would have been different.
49:08And it wouldn't have been...
49:08It might have been funny, but in a different way.
49:11It wouldn't have worked the way Melchert worked.
49:12It's the sort of... It's the authority of youth.
49:15Slightly red cheeks, I remember having, because he was constantly puffing and blowing.
49:21And constantly, I...
49:23It had in my head that he had piles, so that when I sat down...
49:25Oh!
49:27Like that.
49:28All the time, these strange noises and bleats and bars and things.
49:32Baa!
49:33Baa!
49:34Baa!
49:34Baa!
49:35Baa!
49:36It's an extraordinary gift to play a character who isn't afraid of no one,
49:40who is in supreme command.
49:41It was just a wonderfully sort of seamless...
49:44There was this feeling of a...
49:46of an unstoppable train of a performance.
49:50Who is the judge, by the way?
49:51Baa!
49:53I'm dead.
49:55Yeah, come on then, come on.
49:56Give us every five minutes.
49:58We can have a spot at lunch.
49:59The court is now in session.
50:01General Sir Anthony Sissel Hogmanay melt it in the chair.
50:04And I remember about five or six years after Blackadder Thorne,
50:08I was walking along the street and somebody shouted at me,
50:11You bastard pigging murderer!
50:14And I thought,
50:15Oh God, it's a loony!
50:17So I quickened my step.
50:18Then I heard footsteps hurrying after me.
50:21I said,
50:21Mr Fry!
50:22Mr Fry!
50:23And I went,
50:24Yes?
50:24He said,
50:25Sorry, sorry, you seem very upset.
50:26And I said,
50:26Why don't you call me a bastard pigging murderer?
50:28He said,
50:29No.
50:29No, I said Flanders pigeon murderer.
50:32The case before us is that of the Crown versus Captain Edmund Blackadder.
50:37The Flanders pigeon murderer!
50:41Oh, um, Clark,
50:42hand me the black cap shall we?
50:43I'll be needing them.
50:46I love a fair trial.
50:49For all the comedy bawling and bleating,
50:52the final episode saw events take an extraordinary turn,
50:56as Captain Blackadder and his troops braced themselves for the inevitable.
51:01Don't get your stick, Lieutenant.
51:02Right, sir.
51:03Wouldn't want to face a machine gun without this.
51:06I just remember feeling, you know, the,
51:10you know, the impending doom for my character.
51:13I remember feeling this strange sort of knot in the pit of my stomach.
51:19And it was the first time, you know, as an actor,
51:21that I had felt the predicament of my character.
51:25I was going to die at the end of the week.
51:28It was much more like a serious play or a drama,
51:32as all the comedy kind of melts and fades out of it
51:35and becomes sadder and sadder and more and more tragic
51:38and eventually almost unbearably moving and sad.
51:42It's valedictory.
51:53I hope no one was left in any doubt of the respect
51:55I think everybody on the team had for,
51:59for the sacrifices made in the honour of the people involved.
52:01But it was a damn silly war.
52:04And if ever there was a subject, you know, requiring of satire,
52:09it's people, no matter how honourably and no matter how nobly,
52:13blindly going to war.
52:16Company, one pace forward.
52:19Company, one, on the signal, company will advance.
52:26Good luck, everyone.
52:28Dad!
52:33In those days, you had to get out of the studio by ten o'clock.
52:37If you didn't, the electricians would pull the switch.
52:39At ten to ten, we finished filming in our normal studio.
52:44We then had to race across to the other studio
52:47and it was then that we saw this No Man's Land set for the first time.
52:51And it looked dreadful.
52:53Okay, well, this apparently is the original footage
52:58from the very last scene of Blackadder 4 where they all go over the top.
53:01And I haven't seen this since 1989.
53:05Action!
53:09They're only actually running, what, 15 yards before they hit the barbed wire
53:14and then they all stand around looking like lemons
53:16and then pretend to die and it's very embarrassing.
53:18Action!
53:39It's pretty unconvincing, isn't it?
53:41Action!
53:43Now, they've done a close-up here.
53:45There's a ghastly shot of Hugh and Tim and Baldrick dying.
53:54Rowan pretending to die but keeping his eyes open.
53:56He's getting up and he looks cross.
54:00That's...
54:02Me looking decidedly miffed.
54:04And that's the end of it.
54:06I can remember coming away thinking,
54:09I've no idea how we're going to end the series.
54:11I thought they would have to end it before we actually went over the top.
54:15It was one of the lowest points, I think, of my television career,
54:18thinking the end of this amazing series and I just screwed it up.
54:22As it was so obvious that we had so little material to work with,
54:26we had to really slow the pictures right down in order to stretch them in time.
54:31But that produced an incredibly good effect with the flashes which were going over on the right of the picture
54:39and the debris that falls over Rowan's character.
54:42In slow motion, this suddenly achieved a grandeur which was not obvious in the full motion.
54:49So then the assistant editor says, what if we slowed the sound down as well?
54:54And suddenly we've got these...
54:56These slow motion sound effects and it starts to get really quite spooky.
55:11Having got Rowan virtually obscured by the debris,
55:15to go to the next shot where we are now in a blank no-man's-land wide shot,
55:20our characters are seen virtually to melt into the landscape.
55:27And then somebody, I think it was the PA, said,
55:31Oh, we should get some poppies, what if...
55:33And somebody got very excited and ran upstairs to the picture library
55:36and got a still, a transparency, some poppies.
55:42Last decision, some bright spark in sound, let's put some birdsong on it.
55:52Even in the edit, it was obviously one of the most moving things that I had ever seen.
56:04In the 19 years since the series ended,
56:07the team have each gone on to achieve greatness in their own right.
56:11But for all of them, there remains something special about the Blackadder era.
56:18I think that I'd have to say that it just seems an unbelievably lucky break.
56:25That something which was just a bit of work that I did for a chunk of time,
56:30you know, doing the best I could with people I really liked,
56:34has turned out to last so well.
56:37I don't think there'd been anything that enjoyed history like that.
56:41The relationships between lords and ladies and dukes and peasants,
56:46and the whole panoply and richness of what it is to come from our culture.
56:51It was just a very enjoyable experience
56:54of spending extended periods of time with people
56:59with whom you felt a tremendous creative empathy.
57:03I was doing time team once and somebody said to me,
57:06here, I knew that bloke who used to be funny.
57:13Only one question remains.
57:15Oh, dear oh, dear oh, Lord.
57:17Will they ever be funny together again?
57:20Would you do it again?
57:22What?
57:23Blackadder.
57:24No.
57:26Because?
57:29Too old.
57:32For one thing, I don't think people want to see us the way we look now.
57:36I really don't.
57:37They want those memories.
57:39There's often talk of a fifth series.
57:42If you had to do another one, what setting would you like to do it in?
57:46If we'd done another one, I think we were going to set it in the 60s.
57:52He had this idea of Adder as a sort of Brian Epstein figure,
57:55and Baldrick as a drummer, a Ringo-style drummer called Baldrick,
58:00who has to wear a beetle wig.
58:01Rowan as the bastard son of Queen Elizabeth II,
58:04but also running a rock band in the King's Road.
58:07It's already sounding shit. That's probably why we never made it.
58:10One I really liked the idea for was the one set in Neanderthal times.
58:15Out of the jungle comes Homo Blackadder.
58:18Oh, I thought you meant gay Blackadder.
58:21Oh, I thought you meant Homo Blackadder.
58:23I was just going, not many parts for girls there and then.
58:26What about you, Tony? Where would you have liked it?
58:28Well, we talked about loads of different ones throughout the days.
58:31I love the idea of a cowboy one.
58:34I'd do that. Definitely.
58:36If I get to be sort of Calamity Jane or something, fantastic.
58:40I would set it in a prisoner of war camp in the Second World War.
58:42I've always personally favoured the Kilditz idea.
58:46But maybe it's best to leave these things as a memory. I don't know.
58:51Time's passed and that's what they were.
58:56Blackadder, Blackadder, Blackadder, his taste is rather odd.
59:03Blackadder, Blackadder, a randy little sod.
59:10Blackadder, Blackadder, who gives a toss the word?
59:18Blackadder, who gives a toss of Jr.
Comments