Blackadder: Britain’s other time-traveling show – British Clack

Blackadder is one of my favorite shows of all time. Period. In my Anglophilc, history-loving, lit geek mind, it’s right up there with such masterpieces as Doctor Who, which is the time-traveling show from Britain that most Americans are familiar with. Despite their many differences, both Blackadder and Doctor Who are shows obsessed with history, and their success indicates that Britons, too, are perhaps obsessed with history. While the Doctor bounces around in space and time,  the four versions of Edmund Blackadder give the audience a prolonged look at some of the most important times in English history: the golden ages of the Elizabethan era and the Regency, and the turmoil of the end of the War of the Roses and WWI, expecting the audience in each case to be smart enough to catch all the historical and literary references.

Though each season was set in a time period, the characters more or less continue from season to season, so presumably each new season  brought us the past one’s ancestors. The two characters of Edmund Blackadder himself and S. Baldrick (the “S” stands for “Sod-off”) were present all four seasons; others came and went.  The show is notable for launching or solidifying the careers of many people. Star Rowan Atkinson and his collaborator Richard Curtis got the biggest boosts, but the show also featured such luminaries as Stephen Fry, Hugh Laurie, and Miranda Richardson. It went on to be considered one of the best British sitcoms of all time — it was even voted #2 in a 2004 poll. All in all, this is an influential show in the history of British comedy, and it is worth checking out for that reason alone.

Even though Atkinson is more famous as Mr. Bean, I love him more as the snarky Edmund Blackadder; he’s much funnier when he gets to speak. Due to overcoming a speech impediment, Atkinson has a funny, over-enunciating way of speaking, such as when he says the name “Bob” or when he describes himself as having “a plan so cunning, you could stick a tail on it and call it a weasel!” (the “cunning plan” is one of the series’ recurring motifs). His character in most seasons is a cynical upstart who is constantly plotting to get ahead but is usually foiled by his own greed and/or the stupidity of those around him. A typical plan in season 3 consists of him helping his boss, Laurie’s Prince Regent, get more money by controlling a new Member of Parliament. It goes awry, and he has Baldrick’s purchase of a “priceless turnip” to blame. The plans  usually go awry for reasons just as ridiculous.

The show’s first season, set in Medieval England, was not successful with audiences.  The show posits a secret history, later quelled by Tudor Propaganda, in which Richard III continued to reign for a number of years after supposedly winning the Battle of Bosworth. This premise required a pretty deep knowledge of Shakespeare’s history plays, and of history itself, to understand it. Edmund, Richard’s nephew, is a sniveling, cowardly whiner who keeps plotting to become king in this version of the show. Baldrick, his servant, is the crafty one, while Edmund is kind of dumb — a complete reversal of this is made in later seasons. This version of the show, while entertaining to a Shakespeare scholar and history nerd like myself, really doesn’t quite work because Edmund is loathsome without being entertaining enough to make up for it.

Clacked by Christina Furtado
on May 30, 2012 @ 18:54 EST5EDT