Blackadder the Third: Nob and Nobility

Blackadder the Third: Nob and Nobility
BBC
1 October 1987
Historical Comedy
VHS
B-

This Curtis & Elton episode is more interesting for its plot twists and turns than for its humour, although there are some funny lines.  Blackadder tries to outdo the Scarlet Pimpernel, and ends up killing two people.  Tim McInnerny, who was Percy in the Renaissance series, plays Lord Topper here.

Blackadder the Third: Ink and Incapability

Blackadder the Third: Ink and Incapability
BBC
24 September 1987
Historical Comedy
VHS
C+

This second episode, also written by Curtis & Elton, just isn't as funny or interesting.  Maybe it's that literature and writing don't lend themselves to satire as well as politics do.  I find it mainly notable for the guest cast, from Robbie Coltrane as Samuel Johnson (who besides becoming Hagrid down the road, would in '88 be the Spirit of Christmas who visits Blackadder) to the comedy team of Jim Sweeney and Steve Steen, later to be seen on Whose Line Is It Anyway?, here playing Coleridge and Byron respectively.

Blackadder the Third: Dish and Dishonesty

Blackadder the Third: Dish and Dishonesty
BBC
17 September 1987
Historical Comedy
VHS
B

Curtis & Elton wrote this first episode of the Regency Period saga, where Blackadder and Baldrick work for the Prince Regent (28-year-old Hugh Laurie so vivid here and on Jeeves & Wooster as the ultimate upper-class twit that it's hard for me to accept him on, for instance, House).  In this story, which like all from B3rd has a Jane-Austen-ish title, scene-stealer Simon Osborne as Pitt the Younger is an adolescent politician bent on taking the Prince off the dole.  Blackadder comes up with an elaborate scheme, involving fraud, bribery, and murder, but Pitt is a worthy, and hilarious, opponent.  I'd have gone with a B+ but it felt like there were too many "endings."

Helen Atkinson-Wood plays Mrs. Miggins, a Coffee Shoppekeeper, throughout the series.  Dennis Lill, who's Sir Talbot Buxomly, a Member of Parliament, would be a Beadle in Blackadder's Christmas Carol.  Mandie Fletcher directed this series as she did Blackadder II.

Blackadder II: Bells

Blackadder II: Bells
BBC1
9 January 1986
Historical Comedy
VHS
B+

Not only does this season-opener have a witty script, by Richard Curtis and Ben Elton, but it has a great regular cast who play off each other well:

• Baldrick (Tony Robinson, dirty, stupid, and yet somehow adorable)
• Queen Elizabeth I (Miranda Richardson, playing her as a deadly but lovable ditz)
• Nursie (Patsy Byrne, babbling like a Shakespearean nurse, including revealing that her real name is Bernard)
• Lord Melchett (Stephen Fry, already statesmanlike at 28 and very dry)
• Lord Percy (Tim McInnerny, somehow both hapless and boastful)
• and of course our anti-hero, Edmund Blackadder (Rowan Atkinson looking disconcertingly dashing in his beard and Renaissance garb)

They're helped along by not only Rik Mayall as flashy Flashheart but particularly Gabrielle Glaister (who would return for Blackadder Goes Forth, which I don't own) as Kate AKA Bob.  She delivers almost every line like she's a Shakespearean heroine, and of course the girl-disguising-herself-as-a-boy-and-falling-mutually-in-love-with-her-employer plot is straight (so to speak) out of Shakespeare, here played for all its gender-bending worth.  (And, yes, Melchett's reactions are ironic, especially now that Fry is married to a younger man.)  Having the courtship play out as if it's a K-tel commercial (or whatever the British equivalent is) and having the offscreen consummation take two minutes, including lighting pipes afterwards, are great touches as well.

Wisewoman Barbara Miller would have an uncredited role as Granny in Blackadder's Christmas Carol, where Richardson and Byrne would return in these roles.  Director Mandie Fletcher would also do Blackadder the Third, which I have a few episodes of.

This is as good a place as any to note that I did watch Blackadder [I] but was unimpressed.  And I never really warmed up to Goes Forth.  I prefer these middle two series, and the Christmas special.