“I want to be remembered when I’m dead. I want books written about me, I want songs sung about me. And then hundreds of years from now I want episodes from my life to be played out weekly at half past nine by some great heroic actor of the age.” (Episode Six: "Duel and Duality")
One of the evergreen staples of the British television industry is the period miniseries or television movie. It seems every year the BBC produces a handful. And with the country’s vast stores of classically ordained literature, they will probably never stop. Just look up the Wikipedia entries on adaptations for any number of eighteenth or nineteenth century books and you’ll find one or two BBC miniseries for each title (a really popular one, Great Expectations, has had at least six). And it is in the midst of this climate that Blackadder the Third came out.
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Exchanging ruffs for wigs, tights for frocks, and trading in sexy Elizabethan grandeur for stately Regency refinement, the third series of Blackadder tapped into this genre rather well. It didn’t need to. Curtis and Elton for a third series could simply have moved the show a mere century (as had been the timespan between the first two series), setting things in the Jacobean era, perhaps around the Civil War. But that would have to be reserved for a one-off special the next year. It was clearly a considered choice to skip forward over two hundred years to place the show in a period context already familiar to British audiences through numerous Jane Austen adaptations, Napoleonic dramas like Poldark, and a highly successful TV movie based on The Scarlet Pimpernel –which one episode would directly parody.
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Blackadder II had worked well enough that there was no need for any fundamental changes for series three, excepting for a notable reduction in the series’ cast. By now, Blackadder and Baldrick were established as the core dynamic of the show –as a foil to the fiendish antihero, the reinvented Baldrick left far more of an impression as the witless sidekick than Percy. And it’s in part because of this, as well as a fear of being typecast that prompted Tim McInnerny to opt out of returning for this incarnation of the show. In his place, Blackadder’s superior and dimwitted friend were combined into one character, the show’s approximation of George, the Prince Regent (later to become George IV), and played by Hugh Laurie, who had appeared as separate characters in the last two episodes of the second series –most notably the villain who ultimately murders the entire court. Not listed with the main cast but appearing in every episode also is Helen Atkinson-Wood (no relation to Rowan) as Mrs. Miggins, a deranged coffee shopkeeper, whose establishment is (in conventional sitcom tradition) a regular locale for Blackadder and several guest characters.
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Blackadder himself, in the centuries since the last series, has fallen quite far. He is now a mere royal butler –privileged still no doubt, but much more working class-adjacent than ever before. I get the impression that Curtis and Elton were grasping for this kind of a social status Blackadder in the second series, and finally were able to embrace it for him here. Baldrick is his dogsbody, doing much of the actual work while Blackadder complains, and the Prince is a highly excitable, naïve and gormless ponce. And the three work very well together, especially as a microcosm of those class themes I discussed previously -Blackadder being in the middle of two idiots, without much opportunity for momentum. Although it is noteworthy that Baldrick, though still unbelievably thick, has certain wits about him that his predecessor apparently didn’t. This Baldrick is very attuned to social trends and celebrity figures, being a fan of both the Scarlet Pimpernel and the “Elusive Shadow”. He’s also possibly a little bit more intelligent than the Prince, as is seen on a couple occasions -most notably in one scene between them in the final episode.
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Each episode title is a play on Jane Austen’s noun-plus-derivative-adjective naming convention, which is quite charming -and the episodes themselves just as much so. The growing pains in the writing that I identified in the second series aren’t so apparent here -with this series Blackadder really comes into its own. The individual episode plotting is tighter while still being loose enough to accommodate a variety of jokes and situations bent on the singular theme -and the reduced cast really focuses things in a like manner. This cast isn’t separated across sets -all three live under the same roof and interact routinely -even the Prince and Baldrick. Curtis and Elton also palpably delight in the more social topics of the era, such as politics, literature, and theatre -all of which provide a more palatable tether to contemporary social commentary. Nowhere is this stronger than in the first episode, “Dish and Dishonesty”, which lampoons the British political process with several not-so-subtle jabs at its then-current form -down to the by-election in-episode being covered by Vincent Hanna (as “his own great-great-grandfather”), a prominent elections reporter in the U.K. at the time.
“Am I jumping the gun, Baldrick, or are the words “I have a cunning plan” marching with ill-deserved confidence in the direction of this conversation?” (Episode Three: “Nob and Nobility”)
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Blackadder the Third is easily the strongest, most consistent series yet, the sharpness and wit of the second series has here reached its peak, and the characters and situation are very much served well by the premise. Though the series is far looser in its coverage than even either of the previous ones -dealing in a wide range of historical subjects dating to anywhere between the mid-eighteenth century to the early nineteenth. In fact, just about every episode contains wild historical anachronism in an effort for the show to be more all-consuming in relation to the Georgian era. In “Dish and Dishonesty”, Pitt the Younger appears as Prime Minister, and as a teenage schoolboy, despite leaving office ten whole years before George became Prince Regent. Far more egregious, “Ink and Incapability” revolves around Baldrick accidentally burning Samuel Johnson’s recently published Dictionary (a premise that Elton characterized as “such a beautiful conceit”), which was really published in 1755, Johnson having been dead almost thirty years by the time of the Regency. Also pre-dating this reign was the French Revolution, which Blackadder and Baldrick get involved in in “Nob and Nobility” and the Battle of Trafalgar, which is implied to be happening soon in the final episode “Duel and Duality”. Even worse are the occasional references and turns of phrase, like Blackadder referring to his book as a “roller-coaster of a novel” about two centuries before roller-coasters were invented, and the Prince citing the story of The Prince and the Pauper, which wouldn’t be written by Mark Twain until 1881.
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Perhaps it all betrays a lack of comparative interest in this period by Curtis and Elton, as opposed to the series before and especially the series after; or more likely it was simply a series of topics the pair were interested in exploring. The context of the Regency for Blackadder fits the sitcom mould perfectly, but there’s not a whole lot of genuine historical touchstones associated with that decade -you have to reach a little around it. And obviously subjects like the French Revolution were important and relevant to address in 1987. By then the spring of that 1980s British Comedy Revolution had passed, though some acts like French and Saunders were just beginning to get their due. Regardless, that movement was still reflected in Blackadder the Third. The Revolution-centric episode brought over Nigel Planer, another of Elton’s stars from The Young Ones, and Chris Barrie, a rising impressionist, just a year before he debuted as his most famous character Rimmer on the sitcom Red Dwarf.
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Apart from these and Robbie Coltrane, who had wonderfully portrayed the aforementioned Johnson, the hip young comedians guesting on the show were outnumbered by more established veterans of the British television industry, like Dennis Lill, radio legend Hugh Paddick and Carry On’s Kenneth Connor, and Warren Clarke -best known as Dim, the weakest of Alex’s droogs in A Clockwork Orange. However it was those younger folks who made the stronger impressions, not least of which the Blackadder veterans in new roles. “Nob and Nobility” sees McInnerny come back and have a lot of fun playing three different sides of an intelligent heroic character in sharp contrast to his previous Lord Percy. Miranda Richardson plays a doe-eyed industrialist’s daughter in “Amy and Amiability”, eventually getting to chew scenery as her alter ego the Elusive Shadow. And in the finale, Stephen Fry turns up as the roaring Duke of Wellington, a character who would be moulded into his next incarnation of Melchett. There’s a sense of freedom in the performances of all three that would greatly inform their new parts in the Blackadder to come.
“These are volatile times, your Highness. The American Revolution lost your father the colonies. The French Revolution murdered brave King Louis. And there are tremendous rumblings in Prussia, although that might have something to do with the sausages. The whole world cries out ‘Peace, Freedom, and a few less fat bastards eating all the pie.” (Episode Four: “Sense and Senility”)
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I feel like Elton in particular relished the opportunity this series provided to explore class politics in a more visceral fashion -he makes his only cameo appearance in “Sense and Senility” as an anarchist who tries to murder the Prince at a play. And if you’ve seen any of his stand-up, it’s the same quick-fire energy he brought to modern political and economic topics of the 80s, only here the rampant array of nonsensical euphemisms seem to satirize that very style. Though anarchy is only referenced specifically in that one episode, still those strands of anti-authority are pervasive –the number of apparent elites whom Blackadder must thwart over the course of the series could give Animal House a run for its money. Even broadly sympathetic though he may be by virtue of his naïve idiocy, the Prince is included in this, and the series’ ending is quite emblematic of this theme –even if I would argue it’s not thought through. Also, just the idea of a Prince answerable to and vulnerable to lower classes is one the series runs with well.
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Blackadder the Third also features more cultural jokes than the last series, taking advantage of the interesting Euro-politics of its period, but also to reflect those national stereotypes so popular in British comedy. Obviously mocking the French with shallow humour has long been a British comedy tradition –Blackadder even notes in “Nob and Nobility” the sacred animosity between the two cultures. But England’s other favourite punching bag, Scotland, is made to take it in “Duel and Duality” as Blackadder’s identical highland cousin MacAdder comes in for a couple minutes of as many Scottish stereotypes as the writers can think of. And then there are the recurring German jokes directed at the prince, fourth in England’s continuing dynasty of Germanic monarchs. All of these are fairly lowbrow (the easiest joke for an English comedian to make is about the French), but they’re clever and in the heights of their caricature, inoffensive. I’m sure this is a show that would say it makes fun of everybody equally.
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We know that isn’t true of course. But while Blackadder the Third has its occasional awkward jokes and moments of undue mean-spiritedness (that moment in “Amy and Amiability” comes to mind where Blackadder purely for the cruelty of it tells a sobbing Mrs. Miggins –who’s been in love with him- that he would rather reproduce with Baldrick), this series on the whole has probably aged better than either of its predecessors. In fact, given the abundance of wigs and make-up and ruffles I’m surprised the show didn’t make a bunch of easy gay jokes –even regarding the flamboyant actors, the comedy is more focused on ham. Of course an absence of women characters simply means less opportunity for casual sexism, and most of the off-screen women, like Caroline of Brunswick, tend to be sexual or misogynist tropes. Still, Amy Hardwood ultimately proves to be a sort-of exception, and Mrs. Miggins might be the most underrated character of the entire series.
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What I find is most bothersome about the show actually is not any problematic social or political statement as much as a distracting narrative choice for its ending. After surviving a close shave with death while disguised as the Prince in a duel with Wellington (and the episode does have a bunch of great Wellington puns), the Duke puts aside their conflict and kills the Prince in disguise as Blackadder for his apparent gross insubordination. The real George dies and Blackadder goes on to pose as the Prince (and later King) presumably for the rest of his life. It is the only series that doesn’t end with the death of most of its cast, and consequently the only one where Blackadder comes out on top …and that feels wrong. As stated before, Blackadder works best as an anti-hero when his machinations are foiled –and while there’s certainly more of a kinship of status and struggle between this Blackadder and the audience, he is still a horrible person here rewarded for his bad behaviour in that way that makes him a model for awful people. It’s also just significantly awkward in retrospect within the series continuity; the downward social trajectory of Blackadder over the ages is important –and here it is interrupted by him getting to become King.
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I wonder if Curtis and Elton thought this series would be the end –it would give some credence to the choice. But I also think it was done for the sake of the pair of parallel jokes for Blackadder and the Prince that close out the series. It remains I think the biggest mistake of a third series that otherwise stands up quite well: Blackadder at the peak of its witty charms, its cleverness, its characters. For as much as it would annoy pedantic historians, it has real fun with the era -both its opening and closing titles, so specific in aesthetics and period flourish, are my favourites across the series. And this instalment I think remains a model for period comedy –especially in those first three episodes, which are among the best of the series. It left Blackadder in a really dominant place -and after acing historical television comedy, the only place left to go would be naturally to make television comedy history.
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