Oh, bless the Lord for the gift of laughter. What’s to say? Well, lots. A corking untransmitted pilot, for a start. The badly-produced, over-complex first series (1983) is still fondly remembered, and has just been granted a DVD release. Its peak was Blackadder II (1986), although Blackadder The Third (1987) follows close behind. Blackadder Goes Forth (1989) was generally great, although it suffered from fifty seven too many mugging nods to its popularity (the reference to a ‘cunning plan’ in dumbed-down Baldrick’s first line), and the hypocritical, over-rated poppy-field ‘people’s ending’ which makes us sick.
1.
In the first series (The Black Adder, 15/6/83 - 20/7/83), the episodes ‘Born To Be King’ and ‘The Queen Of Spain’s Beard’ are erroneously billed as episodes 4 and 2 respectively, despite the fact that they have always appeared the other way around. For the 1990 video releases (BBCV 4293 and BBCV 4296), the shows appear in the same order, but have been re-numbered on-screen.
2.
In ‘Beer’ (Show 5, 13/2/86), the headphones of a crew member are visible, in silhouette, at 13’58. A glance at the rushes (or, in this case, one out-take shown as part of Comic Relief) reveals that they were probably overseeing a troublesome door:EDMUND Baldrick!
BALDRICK My Lord?
EDMUND Fetch my dear aunt a raw turnip, will you?
BALDRICK But we’ve...oh, that sodding door’s opened again.
[ > NOTE: The other out-takes contained in this Comic Relief selection were as follows -
Blackadder II - ‘Beer’
2. Blackadder II - ‘Money’ (Show
4, 6/2/86)
3. Blackadder The Third - ‘Dish &
Dishonesty’ (Show 1, 17/9/87)
4. Blackadder Goes Forth - ‘General
Hospital’ (Show 5, 26/10/89)
5.
Blackadder Goes Forth - ‘Private Plane’ (Show 4, 19/10/89)Lord Flasheart (Rik Mayall) consults with a floor manager about his line ‘Training - how to fly and get into one of these’. He insists that he knows it, before flicking a V-sign and mouthing ‘wanker!’ as the floor manager walks off. The re-taken line was eventually cut from the transmitted episode.
6.
Blackadder Goes Forth - ‘Corporal Punishment (Show 2, 5/10/89)Lieutenant George (Hugh Laurie) falls arse-over-tit as he enters the courtroom.
7.
Blackadder Goes Forth – ‘Corporal Punishment’Lord Melchett (Stephen Fry) corpses into his moustache while delivering his verdict on Edmund’s pigeon-slaughtering. Hugh Laurie appears to be causing this lapse, and Fry orders that he be sent off the set (‘They’re all making faces at me and everything...’). The resulting edit seems to comprise of about three different takes - a mixture of close-ups, medium-shots and cutaways. (In the out-take, Fry’s ‘Before we get on to the formality of sentencing the deceased’ line was shot in close-up: in the episode it is a three-shot involving the two officers sitting either side of him.)
An out-take from the Blackadder II episode ‘Bells’ (Show 1, 9/1/86), involving Rik Mayall fluffing a line as Lord Flasheart was also shown as part of a Noel Edmonds out-takes selection broadcast in 1987. BBC Archives claim that ‘only some rushes survive’ from the series. The clips shown point to the existence of rushes from seven separate programmes.
Having said that, more clips from broadcast-quality copies of staff 'Christmas tapes' have recently been purloined for Aunties Bloomers type shows recently, so it's more likely that these tapes boast the only surviving out-take footage from Blackadder .]
3.
The Blackadder The Third episode concerning the Scarlet Pimpernel (‘Nob & Nobility’, 1/10/87) was absent from repeats of the series in 1988. This being back in the days when people noticed and cared about such things, a viewer alerted Points Of View to the matter. A spokesman claimed that the show had been removed for ‘legal reasons’, but did not give details. However, since the episode featured guest appearances by Nigel Planer, Tim McInnery and Chris Barrie, it is possible that there was a dispute over repeat fees from one (or all) of these actor’s agents. Whatever the problems were, the episode was reinstated into repeat screenings in 1990, 1994 and 1998.
3.
The Blackadder scriptbook (The Whole Damn Dynasty, Michael Joseph 1998) looked like the opportunity for fans to de-mystify hitherto inaudible snatches of dialogue. This would only be an option, however, if the book had taken the original shooting scripts as its main source: unfortunately, the scripts appear merely to be transcripts from videotapes, with neither Curtis, Elton nor Atkinson providing much of an input. One noteworthy scene is in the Blackadder The Third episode ‘Sense And Senility’ (8/10/87), where two actors, played by Kenneth Connor and Hugh Paddick, indulge in a bizarre theatrical ritual whenever Edmund says ‘Macbeth’. This wording of this ritual is not obvious to the viewer, but Ceefax 888 subtitles translated it as 'Hot potatoes / orchestra stalls / but we'll make amends'; in the stage directions, it is simply noted that the two men indulge in 'a violent and stupid superstitious ritual'.(Thanks to Peter Aston for the correction to the above entry and the following tempting information:
'The light falling on the head scene that was cut from 'General Hospital' - I was at the recording of that show, and there some other scenes that were recorded that made for a different ending but didn't show up. I can't remember exactly, but it involved 2 seperate parallel pieces where Black Adder & Captain Darling each ended up in bed with the nurse. I'll watch the episode again and try and jog my memory.')
4.
The one-off episode Blackadder’s Christmas Carol (23/12/88) features this dialogue:BALDRICK I’ve been helping out with the workhouse nativity play.
EDMUND Oh, of course. How did it go?
BALDRICK Well, not very well. At the last moment, the baby playing Jesus died!
EDMUND Oh dear. This high infant mortality rate’s a real devil when it comes to staging quality children’s theatre. What did you do?
BALDRICK Got another Jesus.
EDMUND Oh, thank goodness. And his name?
BALDRICK Spot. There weren’t any more children, so we had to settle for a dog instead.
EDMUND Oh dear. I’m not convinced that Christianity would have established its firm grip over the hearts and minds of all mankind if all Jesus had ever said was ‘woof’.
BALDRICK Well, it went alright until the shepherds came on. See - we hadn’t been able to get any real sheep, so we had to stick some wool...
EDMUND On some other dogs.
BALDRICK Yeah. And the moment Jesus got a whiff of ’em, he’s away! While the angels are singing ‘peace on earth and goodwill to mankind’, Jesus scampers across and tries to get one of the sheep to give him a piggy-back ride.
EDMUND Scarcely appropriate behaviour for the son of God, Mr Baldrick. Weren’t the children upset?
BALDRICK No, they loved it. They want us to do another one at Easter. They want to see us nail up the dog.
When the episode was repeated in January 1998, this last line was missing - Baldrick’s ‘no, they loved it’ line cutting to an inappropriately huge audience laugh. It is likely that the cut was made following accusations of blasphemy (presumably from only one or two viewers) following its original transmission.
6.
An edition of Behind The Screen (16/10/89) showed rehearsal footage from Blackadder Goes Forth. This material, featuring the team corpsing and discussing whether two pencils up the nose are funnier than one, was also teasingly used in ‘Autumn season on BBC2’ trailers. Since recordings for the series did not begin until a few weeks before transmission, it is possible that this material was used in the absence of any footage from the shows themselves.
[NOTE: Another ‘Autumn on BBC1’ trailer, perhaps put together before the sessions had been completed, featured a close-up of Edmund saluting, before barking ‘Baldrick!’. This quick sequence did not feature in the series. The title, it appears, had also yet to be finalised, as it was displayed on-screen simply as ‘Blackadder’.]
7. Neither of the editors of this site has seen the special Millennium Dome 'Blackadder-ette'. If any Dome-visitor wishes to review the film and suggest edit-theories then be our guest...
Production shots from The Black Adder. No relevance here - just nice to see once in a while.
"Wehey - 'luck' - geddit?"
