“Whatever it was, I’m sure it was better than my plan to get out of this by pretending to be mad. I mean, who would have noticed another madman around here?” (Episode 6: “Goodbyeee”)
For its first three series, Blackadder was not a show known for its risks, at least not in terms of tone and subject matter. Obviously, the whole historical conceit was something of a gambit by virtue of it not having been done much in the British comedy mainstream; but Blackadder was not a show that broadly rustled feathers or challenged the sitcom form more substantively. That is until it moved into its fourth series and the choice was made by Richard Curtis and Ben Elton to bring Blackadder into the twentieth century by setting it in the trenches of the First World War.
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War comedies were obviously not a totally unheard of concept -though it was significantly less popular in Britain, M*A*S*H had come and gone by the time Blackadder Goes Forth (as it was cleverly titled) began production. Oh, What a Lovely War! had been a success on stage and screen, and Dad’s Army had primed the pump for military humour in the sitcom genre. But of course, that had been largely about pensioner volunteers on the home front during the Second World War, far from much of the real fighting and danger. Blackadder was to be set directly in the midst of the First. That war and its context holds enormous weight in British history; as arguably the culmination of the Industrial Revolution, it is marked by some as the true beginning of the end of Britain’s imperial dominance, changing forever the nation and its culture for the new century. And it also must not be forgotten that in 1989, there were still living people who remembered it, remembered someone who died in it.
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So it was considered a bit of a taboo to make a comedy about. But Curtis and Elton felt a need to. “If ever there was a subject requiring of satire,” said Elton. “It’s people no matter how honourably and no matter how nobly, blindly going to war.” The writers insisted their satire was aimed primarily at the system of the war itself and the “lions led by donkeys” of it all rather than the soldiers who fought and died. And there is a lot of absurdity to mine inherent to that set-up, a situation that presented the British class system –always at the forefront of Blackadder- in microcosm. Here was an option to have posh George, relatively middle-class Blackadder, and poor old Baldrick all stuck in the same rotten circumstance together. Everything that led up to the war had a twinge of the ludicrous to it, in the attitudes, the misconceptions, the feeble attempts to adjust to an entirely new form of war. As Curtis has said: “the first hundred pages of any book about the First World War are hilarious, and then of course everybody dies.”
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That last bit was something the show adamantly took seriously, in spite of its unspecific, cynical gallows humour of the situation. And it shows through in Blackadder’s stark change of motivation for this series. He is not concerned with climbing the social ladder or improving his status within stratified British hierarchy. All Captain Blackadder, career soldier, cares about is getting out of the war, and just about every episode follows his varied schemes in pursuit of this end. There’s a wonderful, classical consistency in this, and especially in lieu of it being a goal the audience can raptly get behind. In collusion with him, or occasionally foiling these plans are, as always, Pvt. Baldrick, the low-serving honest tommy –dumber than he’s ever been, and yet keenly insightful- and Lt. George Colthurst St. Barleigh, Hugh Laurie’s posh imbecile now the very kind of upper-class Edwardian twit he would make his own in the British comedy landscape into the early 90s.
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Also returning is Stephen Fry as General Sir Anthony Cecil Hogmanay Melchett, who shares the name of his sixteenth century ancestor but is in personality much more descended from the Duke of Wellington, seen in the final episode of the previous series –minus some of the brashness. General Melchett is the quintessential image of the incompetent army commander: grossly elite and out of touch, blinded to the war’s realities, utterly incapable of formulating a coherent battle plan, and Fry plays him with a distinguished sense of unearned authority –as well as his own catchphrase: “Baaah!” And rounding out the cast is a returning Tim McInnerny as the brand new Captain Kevin Darling, taking up the post of Blackadder’s one intellectual rival and the aide to General Melchett, whose amusing name (credited to Fry) is the source of many a funny line-read. For both Fry and McInnerny, these parts represented a reinvention of their respective places in the Blackadder universe, generally for the better. Fry is much funnier in this type of character than he was as the grovelling lord, and McInnerny, who’d initially left the show out of fear of being typecast as Percy, was by all accounts delighted by the sharpness of Darling and plays the part of Blackadder’s nemesis to perfection.
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This series’ areas of interest included court-martials, the royal flying corps, espionage, and music hall -as Curtis and Elton satirized the world of the early twentieth century beyond the war as well. “Major Star” is perhaps the episode least connected to the war as it follows Blackadder putting on a cabaret to boost morale -with plenty of gags about vaudeville and specifically the career of Charlie Chaplin, whom Blackadder hates. That same episode also features Baldrick, in a continuation of his ancestor’s burgeoning class consciousness, becoming fixated on the Russian Revolution and a hopeless plan to overthrow the aristocracy. Typically though, the outside world was merely alluded to, as the characters were literally trapped by their situation -both the first and last episodes illustrate this pretty bluntly, with the dug-out, the General’s office, and No-Man’s Land as the only locations. Still, the tenor of the era still rang strongly -with Melchett and George especially representing that late-colonial attitude that has become a shorthand of pomposity in British culture ever since. Plenty of idioms of the period are used -it was here that I first learned my name used to be a derogatory term for Germans (despite the name being now and historically Dutch). On the whole the show was just very immersed in its era, more so than pretty much any since that first series. And coming off of what was probably the least accurate incarnation of the show, Blackadder Goes Forth was probably the most historically authentic -or at the very least consistent. The whole series pretty much takes place in 1917, and its historical markers bear that out: the February Revolution, the Americans entering the war -the Red Baron’s death being moved back a little is about the only noteworthy change to the record.
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Played by Adrian Edmondson, he is killed in this series by another returning character, easily the most remembered of Blackadder Goes Forth’s guest roles, the Squadron Commander Lord Flashheart, once again played by a hyper-sexed Rik Mayall -Edmondson’s frequent comedy partner incidentally. But this Flashheart is quite different from his predecessor in an extremely dated way that both speaks importantly to shifting comedy trends and makes the fourth episode of this series frequently unpleasant to watch three decades later. Mayall’s wicked sharp delivery isn’t quite enough to distract from just how loudly obnoxious, sexist, and homophobic this Flashheart is, and more importantly how the episode treats this as nothing but fun. According to Mayall, he agreed to play Flashheart initially on the condition that he would get more laughs than Atkinson, and it would seem “Private Plane” was designed around that -giving him a barrel of jokes based around the same shallow topic: his sexual prowess and obscene masculinity, in every scene he’s on screen. And I do remember finding it funny and taboo, but as a grown-up it’s hard not to see as puerile Flash casually calling Bob a bitch and boisterously declaring to the pilots “last one back’s a homo”. And again, this wouldn’t be so off-putting if the episode indicated any self-awareness. But just like in “Bells” Flash departs the episode as the apparent cool character. Unlike in “Bells” though, his innuendos aren’t indiscriminate and his sexuality so much more toxically rigid. It’s a shame because the episode has a lot of great jokes in it otherwise.
But it is also the episode with maybe the series’ only open sexual assault joke. In these, “Private Plane” perhaps of any episode, reflects the ‘edge’ style of British humour that was on the rise at the time -provocative and sometimes openly politically incorrect. It would come to be a big feature of British comedy in the 90s -the decade where Mayall and Edmondson would reunite for the incredibly crass Bottom, where noted wanker David Baddiel among other comedians would don blackface in mean-spirited sketches, and where Brass Eye would regularly push buttons of good taste (Brass Eye at least though picked the right targets). It’s all pretty embarrassing today, and Blackadder’s entertainment of it is no exception.
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There are other problematic bits outside that episode, typically to do with sexuality and gender. An Oscar Wilde joke in “Corporal Punishment” (where you learn a new archaic gay slur: “whoopsie”), as well as some of the general tenor around Darling -the jokes around his name often inviting gay connotations; though these still tend to be funny in a Smithers/Burns sort of way, and especially in McInnerny’s twitchy reaction every time it comes up (a tick he apparently didn’t get over for several years). Most notable though is the episode “Major Star”, which I was concerned about going into this re-watch as the principal plot thread revolves around Melchett falling in love with George’s drag persona, but is on the whole only about as uncomfortable as “Bells”. In fact, this is also the episode that reintroduces Bob!
“If nothing else works then a total pigheadedness to look facts in the face will see us through.” (Episode Four: “Private Plane)
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The occasional rough patch aside, Blackadder Goes Forth is fairly consistent in its humour, still very sharp and creative –even as Curtis and Elton resented the cast constantly altering their jokes. The first episode, “Captain Cook”, is really solid beginning to end as a representation of this series’ character, while both “Corporal Punishment” –in which Blackadder is put on trial for shooting the General’s beloved carrier pigeon, and “General Hospital” –in which he investigates a German spy in the field hospital, are incredibly fun explorations of specific sectors of war life. The trial sequence in the former, the Darling interrogation in the latter, the twist in the painting assignment from the first –all perfectly written and performed. Everybody enters the series fully formed, even the guest characters; Miranda Richardson once again appears in the fifth episode as Nurse Mary, another seemingly dippy woman revealed to be more severe whom Blackadder screws over in the end.
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But colouring the humour of this Blackadder series is a tone substantially darker than what had come before. Death was never a stranger, especially in the first two series, in Blackadder’s life, but here it just about envelops his entire world. “This world-weariness of Blackadder was something kind of extraordinary,” observed McInnerny in Blackadder Rides Again. “It was something kind of beaten down. He was not necessarily going to win all the time, and knew that he wasn’t.” A simple order to advance is really all that stands between Blackadder, Baldrick, and George, and certain death in No Man’s Land. Because of this there’s a lot more gallows humour, jokes about dying, morbid references to the war’s immeasurable body count; “[the war] would be a damn sight simpler if we just stayed in England and shot fifty thousand of our own men a week.” (“Private Plane”). In “Captain Cook”, the stakes are well-established by Blackadder tossing George’s helmet over the top for it to come down riddled with bullet holes, “Private Plane” makes note of the Twenty-Minuters being named for their average life expectancy, “General Hospital” opens with the trench being bombed, there is a scene of Baldrick and George loudly proclaiming their stupidity while standing in the middle of No Man’s Land in the light of a flare, and Blackadder is very nearly executed by firing squad. It’s played for laughs but also grim commentary –there’s a palpable disgust with the war and those who were leading it. I never fully appreciated before just how bitter, though in a good way, this show was about the utter and complete waste the First World War was. The last episode even depicts Baldrick failing to remember how it started and Blackadder providing a very cynical observation on its origin that definitely has some honest truth to it.
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And it’s about time we talked about that final episode, which probably single-handedly elevated this series as the most popular and acclaimed incarnation of Blackadder. An episode that has probably held up better than anything else in this entire series. Dispensing with the military pun titles of the other episodes, “Goodbyeee” is very subdued, a bottle show confined to just the two regular sets (even the brief cutaway to Geoffrey Palmer’s Field Marshall Haig is clearly shot in Melchett’s regular office), with Blackadder, Baldrick, and George never leaving the dug-out until the very end. And indeed it is. Though the episode is still very funny and includes one of Blackadder’s most iconic visual gags –Blackadder pretending to be mad by putting his pants on his head and sticking two pencils up his nose- it is notably melancholy in tone as the gang await that elusive Big Push, which they seem to have no way left to get out of. And so the episode is curiously reflective, chunks of it devoted to Blackadder, Baldrick, and George mulling over the war and their experiences: George noting how all of his university friends have died in battles like the Somme and Gallipoli, the three reminiscing about their history together, the Christmas Truce and subsequent football match –connecting these characters directly not only with the surrounding history but the real nameless thousands who were part of it. In the sharpest expression of his common tommy ubiquity, Baldrick inquires about the start of the war, mourns his various lost pets, and decries the war itself: “Why can’t we just stop sir? Why can’t we just say ‘no more killing, let’s all go home’? Why would it be stupid just to pack it in sir, why?”
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It should be noted this kind of thing is not at all common in British comedy, which tends to operate under a “just the jokes” mindset. But Curtis and Elton and the whole team knew they couldn’t do that with the First World War. Atkinson has stated of the episode that it was their way of justifying all the jokes they had been making throughout the series, to prove that they did take the cost of the war seriously. All through the episode the weight of impending death looms large, and not even Darling can escape it, as Melchett gives him a last minute commission to the front line as a ‘gift’ –obtuse until the end. By the time Darling arrives in the trench, Blackadder has received the bad news that his last saving grace won’t work and the last of the jokes start to peel away. The moment it becomes emphatically real, that gets me every time, is when George’s happy-go-lucky attitude diminishes in the face of reality for the first time in six episodes and he admits that he’s scared to die (the subtlety of it may honestly be one of Hugh Laurie’s greatest performance moments). Out of the dug-out, the soldiers all lined up, there is a moment where a happy ending looks to be in sight: the canons have stopped, and everyone but Blackadder is optimistic until Darling confirms the year is only 1917. Hope is dashed and Baldrick offers one last cunning plan that Blackadder acknowledges it is too late for. He wishes “good luck” to his comrades in an accent that might well be sincere, and as they go over the top the footage slows as a tender rendition of the Blackadder theme plays; Blackadder, Baldrick, George, and Darling are consumed by the fog of war and the scene fades into a still image of a poppy field –the episode aired just a week before Remembrance Day.
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The whole thing was apparently an accident, the slow motion and poppies brainstormed in the moment when the original death of the main characters came out looking far too awkward but the cast were too emotionally drained for a second take. Some real yet simple last minute ingenuity is what brought about one of the great television series finales. The stark sobriety of the episode and the bold emotional poignancy of the ending was widely acclaimed, this episode likely responsible for the series winning the BAFTA award for Best Comedy Series. And it remains a landmark moment in British television history, one of the key things that cemented Blackadder’s legacy more generally. And even in looking at this show with a shrewder eye all these years later, there’s nothing I can really critique about “Goodbyeee”, easily the best episode of Blackadder, only more radical and moving with time.
It brought this show about history to a historic conclusion, even while a space remained open for Blackadder to live on.
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