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.