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.