The True History of the Blackadder: The Unadulterated Tale of the Creation of a Comedy Legend

by J. F. Roberts

  Having broken the cardinal rule of sitcom by writing a new episode to establish the situation, the first Chronicle the team put through the BBC sitcom assault course was ‘The Foretelling’, in which we discover the depth of Henry Tudor’s treachery, and witness the birth of the Black Vegetable. It’s easy to forget, after four triumphant series of often absurd but generally grounded historical comedy, that Blackadder essentially began life as a ghost story. In fact, not only would the writers’ desire to prod Shakespeare inspire them to echo Banquo’s ghost by having Richard III’s spectre chasing after his own head, the series would also contain instances of genuine black magic, witchcraft, demons and even a cameo from Satan himself. But then, as adaptations of an unreliable chronicle, each episode was bound to represent the superstitions of the Middle Ages, creating a world in which an old crone can conceivably give birth to a poodle, sticking your finger up a sheep’s bottom on Easter Monday increases fertility, the King eats roast horse and there are any number of popes at any given time. This is lost history after all – who remembers the Swiss Invasion now?

  The lavish production design underlined the ridiculous nature of this forgotten period of history, with costume designer Odile Dicks-Mireaux given free rein to add to the spectacle, with knights sporting absurd antlers and King Richard rarely seen without his golden armour. Atkinson adds, ‘I remember having increasingly ludicrous codpieces, and wondering if it wasn’t so lewd that your eyes were glued to it instead of the actor the entire time when it was in shot. We compromised on something that, even now, when you look at it, still looks fairly extraordinary. I’m not sure that you’d want to do that kind of thing now. But I didn’t mind wearing the tights and the codpieces were, we thought, hilarious … these hideous but hysterical priapic appearances in my crotch.’

  A post-coronation sequence in which the new royal family pose for a portrait made good use of the livery of Atkinson’s strange new creation, but though it established the central characters of the series brilliantly, it had to be trimmed for time.

  QUEEN:

  Now, you two boys, since you are going to be princes, we really must settle on a coat of arms. Edmund, I was looking at your shoulder … Perhaps you would like something with your dear little worm on it?

  EDMUND:

  It’s an Adder, mother. A poisonous symbol of aggression and virility.

  QUEEN:

  And what about you, Harry?

  HARRY:

  I’ve been thinking of a sort of fruit motif. A golden pear rampant on a field of gooseberries perhaps.

  QUEEN:

  That sounds nice.

  The second episode introduced a surprise regular character and a double act of great import to Blackadder. ‘The Queen of Spain’s Beard’ mocked the ruthless arranged marriages that powered medieval politics by matching the weedy Edmund with a Hispanic monster of an infanta, Maria Escalosa – a comedic gorgon played to perfection by Miriam Margolyes. Despite the actress’s natural exuberant sweetness, she says she was happy to transform herself. ‘I liked the people very much, much better than the Footlights crowd that I knew earlier … The main thing about the Spanish Infanta is that she’s hideously ugly, and I could have felt a bit peeved at being cast in this role, because although fat, I am charming and pleasant-looking. But I remember it being lots of fun.’ Nevertheless, some of the script’s jokes may have been deemed too cruel – or were cut for time.

  BALDRICK:

  I believe she came by sea.

  EDMUND:

  Yes: they stuck a couple of sails on her and pushed her off at Cadiz.

  Of this first time working with Atkinson, Margolyes recalls, ‘I was fascinated to see that he had a stammer, and sometimes if that got in the way of working, he would get so furious with himself. I only saw, on the television, the superb, disciplined results of his work, I didn’t realise how hard he had to try not to stammer.’ A first-rate comic actor of Miriam’s skill could only be paired with someone equally adept, and so Rowan and John were happy to be reunited with Jim Broadbent, who played the small but memorable role of the Infanta’s interpreter, Don Speekingleesh. Since his appearance on Not, Jim had turned down the role of Del Boy in Only Fools and Horses in favour of the lesser role of dodgy copper Roy Slater (who also debuted in 1983), had appeared in Terry Gilliam’s Time Bandits, and would further his film career by appearing in Gilliam’s next, Brazil. But alongside these small but significant roles, Broadbent was making a far bigger commitment in joining Patrick Barlow in the National Theatre of Brent, playing the long-suffering Wallace: co-star and general dogsbody of the great theatrical impresario Desmond Olivier Dinglefn18.

  Together Miriam and Jim would play scenes which would be among the few moments from the first series which all the Blackadder team agree to be classic, not least Curtis: ‘Jim as the Spanish translator – I’ve never worked out why it’s so perfect, but I think it’s that he mis-stresses every single word. It’s just a sort of astonishing technical feat, to get the rhythms of the English language so completely wrong.’ Brian Blessed recalls, ‘They’d just rehearsed it, and Rowan grabbed me by the arm and said, “Come and watch this, what do you think?” And of course I had tears in my eyes from laughter. And Rowan looked at it, and said, “You find this very funny, don’t you?” I said, “Yes, yes!” And he very seriously said, “I think it’s funny, yes, I think it works.”’ ‘I’m embarrassed to say that I had no idea really of what a Spanish accent was so I just came up with this thing which I suppose is a very bad cod Italian accent, but it seemed to be funny,’ Broadbent shrugs. ‘Nobody questioned it, but I’m embarrassed now because I should have done my research … The fact that he was slightly camp seemed to fall into place from how it was written. That famous line, “Nice to have a little talk just about-a the lydees’ things …”’ ‘Now I’m a specialist in accents,’ Margolyes says, ‘and I’m not quite sure what accent Jim was employing … it doesn’t matter!’

  Playing the leading man’s child bride, when Edmund swaps the Infanta for the ‘young and beautiful’ (and of course, heavily anachronistic) Princess Leia of Hungary, would provide a career highlight for the eight-year-old Natasha King (now a successful businesswoman). Being a Curtis creation of course, Princess Leia bubbles over with cuteness – perhaps discounting her excitement at her husband being burned alive – and King’s performance was perfectly natural, just on the right side of stage-school-style excess. ‘The one thing I remember very clearly,’ she says, thirty years on, ‘is what a genuinely warm-hearted and very considerate cast and crew they were to work with. In particular, aged only eight and with my front teeth missing I was over the moon to receive a bouquet of flowers when filming finished from Rowan Atkinson – it did wonders for me in the playground!’

  Other actors to create a number of reincarnations throughout Blackadder’s history were Bill Wallis, a Cambridge contemporary of Peter Cook’s who would get caught up in the slipstream of the satire boom, singing ‘Alan A’Dale’ for Not Only But Also and providing voices for Week Ending during Lloyd’s tenure and H2G2 (alongside Jim Broadbent and a whole host of fledging members of British comedy acting royalty) before debuting in ‘The Archbishop’ as Sir de Boinod, one of two drunken knights thirsty for the unholy Edmund’s blood. Barbara Miller, a wonderful comic actress who truly embodied Blackadder’s performance ethos of ‘more is more’, also made her first appearance as one of the three witches (alongside Gretchen Franklyn) who hail Edmund King, besides playing Edmund’s claimed wife during his witchcraft trial. She would return as Blackadder II’s Wise Woman and even have an uncredited cameo as the old crone in Blackadder’s Christmas Carol before her death in 1990.

  The influence of The Young Ones is tangible in The Black Adder’s wealth of eccentric cameos and supporting roles – in the last episode, Edmund’s villainous Black Seal is entirely made up of great comedy actors, including Young Ones regular Roger Sloman as Three-Fingered Pete. The Oblivion Boys, Mark Arden and Stephen Frost, made their first app
earances in the show playing themselves as blockheaded guards in much the same way that they’d popped up as policemen in The Young Ones episode ‘Boring’. Perhaps the most eccentric minor character was that of the regular roly-poly Messenger, played by young actor David Nunn, who’d had a few small roles in Not. Where the pilot’s Messenger, Rudkin, had been a straight servant, Nunn’s clumsy herald was an absurd pain in the Black Adder’s neck, prone to mirroring his masters’ actions for no apparent reason other than to annoy them – with no discernible cause, the usually charming Prince Henry reserved a specificfiery detestation for the chubby envoyfn19.

  The greatest example of The Black Adder’s debt to The Young Ones came, of course, with Rik Mayall’s guest spot in the final episode – once again, uncredited, just as he had been with Kevin Turvey: ‘I had my name taken off the credits because I was addicted to this form of performance where the audience thought it was genuinely happening.’ There was less chance of this with his appearance as Mad Gerald. The character’s role essentially was a) to get on Edmund’s nerves while at his lowest ebb, and b) to give the anti-hero some way of escaping imprisonment and a slow death by snail – but within those parameters, from the moment Rik showed up on set, he was in charge of the creation of Mad Gerald. This was the first time that Rowan and Rik could size each other up in collaboration, and see whose brand of humour would win the day.fn20 If Rik’s rotting prisoner of Philip of Burgundy was an ancestor of Lord Flashheart, then phenomenal amounts of sexy genes must have been introduced in the intervening decades. Barely recognisable in a shock wig, with massive false teeth and caked in red-raw make-up, Mayall provided the ultimate test for Atkinson’s eternally irritated Prince: a stinking presence which could rival the medieval Baldrick’s descendants, a penchant for rats and that endless inane laugh – all, according to John Lloyd, of his own invention. ‘Rik insisted he rewrote all his lines, which is why, when he appeared, he wiped the floor with everyone else – because he took over his scenes.’

  The same episode featured the last great guest spot in the series, with Patrick Allen stepping into shot from his narrator’s chair to play the Black Adder’s nemesis: the Hawk, Philip of Burgundy. Originally he was to have enjoyed far more screen time, disguising himself as a messenger to tell the King and Queen that Edmund had beheaded himself in a bear trap, causing clever Baldrick (who found work as a guard) to complain to Percy, ‘I think we may be victims of someone else’s cunning plan!’ Despite his ex-servant’s quick wit, however, in every version of the script Edmund – though eligible for the throne for only a few moments before idiotically poisoning himself – ends up horrifically mangled in Philip’s torture machine, and the Black Adder’s machinations are finally ended.

  Thanks to the leather-and-mahogany tones which made Allen’s fortune,fn21 Lloyd could not have found a more perfect voice to relate the facetious historical background to every episode, introducing the entire legend of Blackadder from the very first shot: ‘History has known many great liars …’ But historical comedy was nothing new to Allen, who had filled the same narrator role for two historical Carry Ons – Don’t Lose Your Head and Up the Khyber. His physical presence for the finale was equally apt: in his long career he’d had roles in a number of historical TV thrillers of just the kind that they were lampooning – indeed, his experience went back far enough for him to have featured in the Errol Flynn Theatre anthology series in the fifties, providing a solid link between Atkinson and his inspiration.

  May His Name Last as Long as Our Dynasty!

  Patrick Allen’s vocal stylings have become such an eerily ubiquitous part of British culture that it’s easy to forget how they defined the cod epic approach of The Black Adder. Several years later, the idea of him using that authoritative, strident voice to read out complete nonsense was hijacked by Vic Reeves and Bob Mortimer for every episode of their first BBC series, and from there he could be heard belting out non sequiturs for an endless succession of shows and products – or rather, in many cases, it was a soundalike stealing his style, for shows like The X Factor, with the sad result that Allen’s bombastic tones can still be heard some years after the one and only original died in 2006, at the age of seventy-nine.

  Complementing Allen’s narration was, of course, Goodall’s theme music. The melody and style had come to Howard back in 1982 when he was first given the brief for the pilot: a strident, galloping slice of orchestral derring-do which could have graced the credits of any serious historical epic. There was work required to fine-tune the theme for the series, however. ‘With a producer like John Lloyd, his instant reaction is to say, “Give it a try, how bad can it be?” Once we had a tune that everybody liked, it was a question of rearranging and finding other ways to do it … It was mock-heroic. In fact the “horse’s hooves” part of the tune I wrote without the chorus for the pilot. I took it into a BBC rehearsal room, and played it to John, and he said, “It’s all right, but it needs a middle bit, it feels like it’s just the first phrase going round and round. What would it be if it was the same rhythm as the word “Blackadder”? So I just said, “What about this? Duhduhduh, duhduhduh …” and he said, “Yeah, that.” It was kind of instantaneous.’ Curtis joined the pair in the pub and added lyrics, perfect for priming the audience for half an hour of thrilling swashbuckling: the sound of hooves, the deadly flashing blade (a reference to the badly dubbed sixties French series called, of course The Flashing Blade), and many a cunning plan. Goodall wasn’t just briefed to pen the theme, though, and provided the soundtrack for every episode – far from being incidental music, his pastoral pastiches and melodramatic organ stabs energised every cunning plan, conveying as much information and emotion as every twist and turn of Atkinson’s simpering face.

  Bringing together all the footage for the audience’s laughter, however, was a sizeable feat even for a master of editing like Lloyd. ‘We never finished on time, so we had to pick up the next week and it got longer and longer. It took months and months to edit.’ Whole sequences had to be cut – in ‘The Archbishop’ there are numerous scenes with the Plantagenet family suffering through boring sermons and King Richard raging from the pulpit at the funeral of the Archbishop he’s just killed. ‘They were all very over-length and very difficult to edit down to size,’ Curtis says, and Lloyd confirms, ‘We showed the first two episodes to BBC Light Entertainment, and they said, “I dunno, is it funny? It’s very good, but it seems rather scary … do you think it’s funny?” We said, “Yeah, we think it’s really funny, but it’s not meant to look, like, obviously funny …”’ Tony Robinson claims to have felt less confident at the time. ‘I think we all knew from the beginning that the first series was pretty dire, but it was a bit like a production line, in that once you’ve started it off, you can’t just stop it right away. Everything was booked, you just had to go through with it and make it as good as you could. And if you think about it, no one had made the kind of historical comedy half-hour series that Richard and Rowan had got in their minds, and it wasn’t until we’d started work that we could actually see what worked and what didn’t.’ ‘My theory,’ Curtis counters, ‘is that no matter how hard you try on sitcoms, out of six episodes two are good, two are all right and two are weak.’

  The finished series debuted on BBC1 at 9.30 p.m. on Wednesday 15 June 1983, and the Radio Times heralded the sitcom and Atkinson’s new character (‘the scummiest toe-rag in the great basket of human history’) with a special investigation into the new-found Chronicles by Lloyd himself, establishing the lore of the Blackadder family. Lloyd has always been keen to shape the packaging of every project with his name on it, from press fluff to comical credits, here listing the cast ‘In Order of Precedence/Affability/Witchiness/Disappearance’ and concluding with the Hollywood-ribbing ‘Filmed in Glorious TELEVISION’. Not for the last time, there was an unexpected episode switch to worry about as well, with Lloyd having to make the decision to swap the unready scene-setting second episode ‘Born to Be King’ with ‘The Queen of Spain�
��s Beard’, despite the opening narration providing a date for each instalment, making a bigger nonsense of the already nonsensical historical context.

  It was a knuckle-gnawing summer for the whole team as their show entered British homes, lined up for judgement by critics both professional and public. Curtis admits to snooping around the suburbs of Shepherd’s Bush peering through windows at half past nine to see whether people were watching his creation or not, whereas Atkinson was saved from such embarrassing behaviour by already being in Australia on a promotional tour. Maybe the biggest impact on Atkinson of having his first sitcom starring role was that it finally forced him to officially change his occupation to ‘comedian’ on his passport, and admit that his dreams of staying out of the spotlight were officially dead: ‘I tried to maintain “engineer” as a career for as long as possible, mainly for insurance policies. You have no idea of the quantum leap in the premium when I made the change.’

  As was clear from the readers’ letters in Radio Times, varying from ‘Superbly brilliant, side-splitting, fabulous, hilarious and very, very funny’ to ‘Utter rubbish – Rowan Atkinson’s facial contortions made me feel physically sick’, the reaction to The Black Adder tended to be quite violently split between approval and disgust at the show’s perceived blasphemy, lewdness and general ‘undergraduate humour’. John Lloyd rightfully bridles, ‘Anyone who’s been in comedy will tell you sooner or later, somebody says, “Oh, undergraduate humour, I see.” You mean, people who have been to university type humour? “Yes, that’s right, toilets and all this kind of stuff …”’ There may have been a number of laughs squeezed out of nether regions in the show, McInnerny concedes, but ‘You have to have a couple in each episode to make a bedrock of laughter, on which to build the intellectual gags!’