Blackadder II (1986)

A sitcom so cunningly devised that you could put a silly hat on it and call it the court jester to the king of weasels.

Edmund Blackadder (Rowan Atkinson) is a suave, cunning and much put-upon member of the court of the capricious and all-powerful Elizabeth I (Miranda Richardson). With the hindrance of his idiot hanger-on Lord Percy Percy (Tim McInnerny) and his innocently dumb servant Baldrick (Tony Robinson) he is constantly devising schemes to get ahead, all of which fail, leaving him constantly just a few steps ahead of the executioner.

Blackadder

If you’ve ever noticed that older adults tend to have a peculiarly clear and immediate recall of events from their childhood and adolescence, you might be interested to know there’s a term for this phenomenon: ‘the reminiscence bump’. This refers to a fertile period, memory-formation-wise, that kicks off around the age of 10 and peaks somewhere between 15 and 25. This explains why cinemas are full of billion-dollar remakes of ‘80s comic books, why Facebook groups are full of crumblies posting about Spangles, and the existence of this newsletter.

It also explains why these memories are so beguiling and cosy: we were young when we formed them, and did not yet have the understanding or context to properly comprehend the world. The recollections might be clear, but they also tend to be narrow in focus and misleading in apprehension.

The reminiscence bump appears to happen because this is a period in our lives during which everything is new, including us; and new information is important information. So in it goes: into our memories, our world views, ourselves. All of which is a long-winded explanation of why, while watching Blackadder II recently, I raised a little cheer at random phrases. ‘A nugget of purest green.’ ‘You have a woman’s hand, my lord!’ ‘You’re so clever today, you better be careful your foot doesn’t fall off.’ The lines that provoke this response aren’t usually ‘jokes’ in the sense of punch lines; they’re set-ups, or bits of business. But they are nevertheless hard-coded somewhere at the root of my personality, impressed upon my brain at its most malleable and hungry moment.

It should be noted, however, that Blackadder II is also full of incredible jokes. One of the reasons it went in so hard and deep is that it is very, very good. It is significant that I don’t remember whether I even saw the previous series of the show, The Black Adder (1983).

The Black Adder was written by Richard Curtis and Rowan Atkinson as a vehicle for Atkinson. It is set in the late Middle Ages, opens with the Battle of Bosworth, and features Atkinson as an idiot prince ineptly scheming to get ahead at court. It is not very, very funny. It is full of funny ideas, but the execution is off. It smacks of an idea that has been both over-thought and under-thought. The opening episode, for example, starts with a voiceover (never a good sign) explaining how Henry VII rewrote history, wiping a fictional Richard IV from the record. If this isn’t complex enough, a lot of the subsequent jokes rely on the audience having an intimate knowledge of Shakespeare’s Richard III.

Blackadder II, on the other hand, begins with a nob joke. Blackadder and Percy are practising archery indoors, and Baldrick is holding the target. Blackadder distracts Percy, who consequently hits Baldrick in the genitals with an arrow.

BLACKADDER
Bad luck, Balders.

BALDRICK
Not to worry my lord, the arrow didn’t in fact enter my body.

BLACKADDER
Oh good.

BALDRICK
No, by a thousand to one chance my willy got in the way… And I only just put it there. But now, I will leave it there forever.

BLACKADDER
That so, Baldrick? It can be your lucky willy.

BALDRICK
Yes, my lord. Years from now I’ll show it to my grandchildren.

BLACKADDER
No Baldrick, I think that grandchildren may now be out of the question.

Of course, this is not just any nob joke; it’s a good nob joke that escalates in all kinds of unexpected ways. But it is a nob joke nonetheless; a mangled nob, rather than a mangled quotation from Shakespeare.

Blackadder II was written by Richard Curtis again, but this time alongside Ben Elton, who had made his name with the anarchic student sitcom The Young Ones (1982). It is often claimed that it was Elton who brought the nob gags to Blackadder II, but this flies in the face of the evidence: there are plenty of rude jokes in The Black Adder. They’re just not very good. One thing that Elton clearly did do was persuade everyone that Rowan Atkinson — who later found international fame as Mr Bean, and whose true comic love is clowning — could get big laughs as a witty and intelligent authority figure.

In other words, Elton brought a different comic sensibility, which went along with his different background. Curtis and Atkinson had both been to Oxford, and Atkinson was already a TV star after appearing in the sketch show Not The Nine O’Clock News (1979—82). Elton, meanwhile, had studied drama at Manchester (alongside Rik Mayall and Adrian Edmondson), and was strongly associated with what was then called the Alternative Comedy scene. And while he was in the process of becoming a TV star himself with Saturday Live (1985—88), his preferred mode of performance was stand-up.

Elton has spoken about how torturous he found working on Blackadder with all those Oxbridge graduates: Curtis, Atkinson, McInnerny, producer John Lloyd, Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie. The ‘Oxbridge’ of it was relevant, and not for inverse snobbery reasons. It was Elton’s belief that the tutorial system at Oxbridge had encouraged in these men a strong preference for disputation. Script-reading sessions, he says, were like agonising quasi-tutorials in which the comedic potential of individual words was discussed at such length that everything stopped being funny. Eventually, unable to bear it any longer, Elton stopped attending them.

The combined backgrounds and talents of Curtis and Elton made the resulting partnership extraordinarily fecund. Indeed, I think there’s an argument that the three seasons of Blackadder they wrote together is the best work either of them has done. The historical satire is leavened with slapstick, the in-jokes with nobs. Just like The Black Adder, Blackadder II has plenty of Shakespeare jokes in it; indeed, there’s one early on in that first episode, shortly before Baldrick’s lucky willy. But it’s a joke about a woman disguising herself as a boy, instead of a ‘humorous’ misquote from a history play. At a more fundamental level, the show’s setting is not the incomprehensible Wars of the Roses, but a period every British child knows all too well; a period that is instantly recognisable from ruffs and codpieces; a period that needs no explanatory voiceover.

Baldrick’s lucky willy joke is a good example of how the rebooted Blackadder approached history. Elizabethans did indeed sometimes practise archery indoors (albeit in the long galleries of grand houses, rather than tiny sets in television studios), but it absolutely doesn’t matter if you don’t know that. If anything, the scene is somewhat funnier if you don’t, the idea of indoor archery being somewhat preposterous.

Then, there is the depiction of Elizabeth I. Miranda Richardson plays her as a psychopathic pony girl, a Tudor St Trinian with access to an executioner. This means there is somewhere around three different levels of comedy in this character. One comedic level springs from portraying Elizabeth I in this way at all. There is a view of the Elizabethan era that is foundational to British sensibility, and it runs as follows (please imagine it heavily italicised): it represented the end of the damp, incestuous, confusing quagmire of medieval Britain, and the glorious beginnings of Empire. Given this, it is comically impudent and slightly rebellious to present Gloriana as a petulantly insane schoolgirl.

Then there is a deeper historical joke, one that is more nuanced and a bit sad: Renaissance princes were, essentially, coddled posh kids who existed in luridly weird circumstances. Their childhoods frequently combined imminent violence with extreme luxury. They believed themselves to be anointed by God, and yet were repeatedly presented with evidence that they were human. They were often, as a consequence, driven more than a little mad.

But the primary-level joke is the obvious one: Miranda Richardson is hilarious. Elton has said that Richardson’s performance was the one that always surprised and delighted him and Curtis; they literally did not know what she was going to do next. It’s a wonderfully unhinged bit of business, totally mad and utterly committed.

But then, all the core cast are brilliant, including Tim McInnerny in his television debut as the spectacularly dim Percy and, particularly, Patsy Byrne as Queen Elizabeth’s childhood nurse, a deliriously lurid performance. And we haven’t even got to the cameos from legends, including Miriam Margolyes and Tom ‘The Doctor’ Baker.

This was the genius of Blackadder II: the marriage of deep wit, punchy jokes, and superlative performances.

II

These days, Blackadder II is a historical comedy in another sense. It is a testament to the BBC of the period.

When it was made in the mid-’80s, the BBC had all the infrastructure of a state broadcaster. Indeed, it was practically a little state itself. It had the studios at Television Centre, where most of Blackadder was filmed. It had a costume department that could handmake Elizabethan costumes for a six-episode sitcom. And, as one of only four television stations in the UK at the time, it had the clout to pull together an amazing crew to make it.

As well as not being hugely popular, The Black Adder was also hugely expensive; as John Lloyd said, it looked a million dollars, but unfortunately cost two. But it was nevertheless recommissioned, because this was a time when the BBC was willing to give shows a chance. Curtis cannily recruited Elton, who insisted that rather than being an expensive, location-shot parody, Blackadder had to become a much cheaper (and more familiar) studio-set sitcom. Then, with perfect comedy timing, the show was cancelled. But after reading the scripts, the incoming Director of Programmes, Michael Grade, reversed his own decision and gave it another go. This brave behaviour by a senior manager says something about the internal culture of the BBC at the time.

Now, that internal culture is as lost to history as Merrie Old England. Admittedly, it was a culture of state control, limited opportunity and suffocating bureaucracy; but it was also a culture that allowed for innovation, principles and taste. It was a culture in which an unsuccessful, niche period comedy was given the room to become a national institution, instead of being quietly cancelled halfway through by a streaming platform that cares only about quarterly results.

But that’s probably just my reminiscence bump talking.

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Speaking of the hysterical terrors of the Tudor court: here’s Wolf Hall