Reviews of the Bosch

“You don’t think it points to the very clear lesson that bad guys have all the fun!” ( Blackadder ’s Christmas Carol ) Richard Curtis and Ben Elton decided against doing a fifth series after the broadcast of Blackadder Goes Forth , partly because of how hard it would be to top and partly out of frustration with the writer’s room structure that had developed around their scripts by the cast without them present. Also, it was the 90s and everyone could see it was time to move on. Within two months  of the  airing of “Goodbyeee” on  New Year’s Day 1990, Rowan Atkinson debuted his Mr. Bean character, which would come to dominate his international celebrity status for the next three decades. Earlier in the year, Fry and Laurie broke out on their own by launching their sketch show A Bit of Fry & Laurie , with Jeeves and Wooster  soon to follow. 1989 also saw Richard Curtis mark his movie screenwriting debut with The Tall Guy , Ben Elton published his first novel, and e...

“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. 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...

“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. Exchanging ruffs for wigs, tights for frocks, and trading in sexy Elizabethan grandeur for stately Regency refinement, the third series of Bl...